


Oak, Maple and Monkey Tree

by archea2



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Ben Hanscom, Coming Out, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gay Richie Tozier, Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, Handfasting, Het Beverly Marsh, M/M, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Social Media, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:33:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22907059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: In the end, they’d left the cot to its own business and shared the queens. Shared unalike, with Mike hogging one bed and the just man’s sleep. Richie went through his in fits and starts from the moment he pushed his face into Bev’s sternum, mumbled “You smell like grass” and groped behind him to drape Ben’s arm down and across his chest, safety-belt-style.In the wake of IT Chapter 2, three Losers grieve, hope, and turn over a new leaf.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh/Richie Tozier, Ben Hanscom/Richie Tozier, Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier
Comments: 11
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hearthouses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearthouses/gifts).



> Dear Opheliahyde,
> 
> I saw that good, rare prompt of yours and mulled it over long past a certain exchange deadline. If it's still okay to make a gift of it, then this fic is for you.

Beverly Marsh is a quarter century old and one-third famous when she is asked out on her first blind date.

“It’s ridiculous,” she tells Kay, who says “No shit, girl” the way Kay says _Baby pink babydolls_ , _this a catalogue or a pram parade?_. They both stare at the cheque in Bev’s hand, and Kay blows air between her front teeth before adding, “He’s the serial masturbator, right? Why does he need a date?”

“His agent does,” Bev says. “Guy named Steve. He was... quite straightforward about it. Long spin short, they’re in for the” - jazz hands - “fiery redhead angle. I get this and first dibs on a makeover.”

“His entire act needs a makeover.”

“Sadly, but unstartlingly, I get no say in that.”

“Well, text me before. After, too. In-between, enjoy your night out with Jizz Whizz Ken.”

Bev laughs again, but while Kay flags the bill for their Coronas she says quickly, “Don’t call it a date before Tom, okay? It’s not, anyway. All PR smoke and mirrors.”

Kay gives her The Look™, but Beverly only bites into her wedge of lime with a smile.

This being L. A., where the jesters king it, she finds her date surrounded by a court of press people, some of whom even have nice things to say about her. He gifts her with an owlish blink. (Odd.) Then another. Third time’s the charm: his eyes light up, like somebody held a sunbeam to Richie Tozier’s XXL glasses and they flashed it back to her, cognacbrownwarm. His right hand is busy with a drink, so he holds his left out. 

Their palms slide into each other.

The warmth bubbles to an urge. Not sex. She knows sex - knows it’s the answer that takes a toll on her knees (aching) and the back of her neck (chafed) because, from all accounts, she needs it rough. This is not it. This is like being made tender by laughter until a summer-blue sky is swimming along with her in a quarry, and there’s a hug waiting, unconditional, hers for the asking...

Before she knows, she’s saying, “ _Touchée_.”

He beams wider, his pliable face a grin, the warmth reaching out between them. Somebody pushes a shot of bourbon into her fingers; the flashes go forth and multiply. “Ri-shie,” he says his French accent guying hers, and, just like that, the evening takes off like a Concord.

The laughter - it’s new. She laughs with Kay, a lot, but never so much that her mouth trembles with it, slack and cozy. With Tom, well, it’s nowhere near serious yet, but Tom himself is the serious type - glowering charisma and all. Richie cannot, will not take himself seriously. Beverly waits and waits for the lewd shoe to drop, but it’s like he has no idea how to make a pass, even a verbal one. The press leaves and he walks her home, a textbook gentleman. They’ve only had a few nachos with the drinks, which may explain why, instead of bestowing a formal kiss on a spot right under the aviator glasses, Beverly Marsh ends up poised on one foot, the other hovering over the Echo Lake, daring her date to strip off alongside her.

“Dare you.”

“Shan’t.”

“Double dare you!”

“Do or do not, there is no dare.”

“Oh come on, Richie, it’ll be fun!” 

He mock-scowls, but then he is struggling out of his black pants (casual, okay, she can work with casual, maybe switch his utterly nondescript browns and greys to something a touch more signature?). For one cryptic beat she expects a peep of white cotton, but it turns out he’s wearing checked boxer shorts. Brown and white checks. The least plausible undies she’d have bookmarked for Trashmouth Tozier, and yet they ping her as the Richiest choice.

“Whoopee doopee!” she yells in a splash.

“Geronimo!” he hollers after her. Five minutes later they’re paddling circles around each other, oblivious to the night, the voyeur ducks, the sundry whistles and voices gathering on the shore. Her leg brushes his underwater and she thinks, blurrily, that she would be okay if the warmth got closer, but he never puts a move on her - in fact, he looks at her crimson silk bra in acute perplexity, the tiniest frown wrinkling his nose. 

Her dress clings to her top to bottom, curve after curve, while they’re being taken to the police station for a hot cup and an admonition - and a few stealth pictures, to be released on YouTube. (But that is a later story.)

“I see I’ll need to keep an eye on you,” Tom banters seriously. He mentions Chicago, and she says yes, mostly because she’s thinking of Richie’s hug. It came, at long last, before Steve hauled him away. A warm, heartfelt press of his chest to hers. But even as he drew her to him, he lifted his other arm in the air, letting it curl around the nothing-there.

And she felt it too. That empty place. Missing link. The hug left incomplete - the air vibrating with absence - the evasive gap once filled with a very solid, very loving body.

“Where have you gone?” asks Tom, smiling, snapping deft fingers between their faces. Tom is very solid.

Richie never calls back. Some weeks later, her nuptials proclaimed, her bags a work in progress, she finds Steve’s card in a projects file; frowns; tosses it away. It will take another long-delayed call - a hug, two hugs - _You two look amazing_ , for the void to recede.

* * *

Might is Right: Derry’s motto. Change that to Flight, and, hey, presto! you have Rich Tozier to a T.

Panic is a two-way traffic, one that grinds down on Richie’s gut at the same time it’s choking him up. Richie wishes he could barf again, his body’s unnatural urge ( _everything about you is unnatural_ ) to unplug gravity and out itself in the gross, oblique, only way known to Richie. He gulps down the urge, grabs his leather-and-canvas toilet bag. Brush, other brush, eyeglass wipes, cologne - no, butter fingers, bottle crashed, _adios_ cologne. 

“Richie! Richie, please, hear me out.”

“No.” Richie keeps his back staunchly turned.

“Richie…”

“Ben” - a warning - “I pong. Truly, I’m one breath away from being a literal trashmouth. Out of my way.”

He didn’t expect Ben’s next words to be at such close range, the speaker claiming the space at his side. Ben’s large hand brushes Richie’s wrist with an odd touch of caution; finds it shaking. “I’m not scared of your breath,” Ben murmurs, stilling Richie. This could be a scene lifted from one of the wet dreams that come and go in Richie’s small hours, but translated into another, darker context. 

“Talk to me,” Ben begs. He sounds tender, his voice infused with the same degree of attention Richie saw him devote to Bev the night before. He shakes his no, only for Ben to summon more of the past by taking his hand, turning it over, palm up, and placing soft fingertips on Richie’s scar.

“What did It say? How did It get to you, so deep that you’d forget this? You’re not alone, Richie.”

Richie laughs, but it feels more like showing his breath the door. 

“It got to me too,” Ben tells their reflections. “Back then - and now. IT’s clever, yeah, I’ll give him that. IT knows how we humans build, nine parts underground to one part surface. So IT digs and digs, and then IT mocks...”

He stops. Richie can hear the quiet spasm in that strong body, under the shirt layered over the tee - Ben, like him, dressed casual for the Losers’ Alumni Evisceration Day.

“IT mocks the boys who want love.”

“So what? You got it.”

Richie turns around sharply, nearly bumping his head on the towel rack. Damnit. There’s simply not enough room in this Khrushchyovka bath for him, his fears and Ben. Still, Richie aligns their gazes in the mirror. God, he needs a shave. The moment he forgets, he looks like a homeless Harry Potter. Whereas Ben - Ben looks like a thousand bucks wrapped in a Nobel Prize for empathy. 

“You got it, you could have anyone, _anyone_ , and they’d give you a bonus medal for asking them. While I - shit. I can’t even keep my dirt to myself.” Richie gives up on the babble, closes his eyes again. “Sorry. And for yesterday. You’d think I made a big enough klutz of myself, drooling all over your flannels.”

“My fla - oh,” Ben says, his epiphany so adorably late that it takes all of Richie’s panic for him not to laugh.

“Sorry,” he says instead, recalling Ben’s flustered face the night before, when Richie began to wax Brazilian like the big girl he is. “It’s okay, I’m okay, you can go. Don’t keep your best girl waiting.”

Sweet, beautiful Bev, who made a show of kissing and nurturing Richie yesterday. And laughed at his antics, a clear chime of mirth, clearer and truer than the hyena snark he culls from his audience. He’d have been okay with her kiss, Richie thinks. He'd loved kissing her cheek. Loves her hair, the colour of pure malt. Best ever girl.

“Not my girl,” Ben says gently, and then he does something _two_ hundred percent unscripted and puts his arms around Richie, pulling him back against the unshakable warmth of his chest.

“She’s married, remember? And anyway - yeah, never mind. Richie, stay. It’s if you go that you’ll end up less, you’ll end up a loner like me. Here, we can be a force.”

Oh, the unfairness of Ben’s cheek and manly cheekbone, the dust of beard around his mouth a foil to Ben's lamb-soft eyes. Loner, his ass. No. God, no, not now, you fucker. Ben’s not into men, Richie’s mind codes furiously down. Abort stiffy. Repeat: abort stiffy. Ben. Men. Fuck, why is Richie cursed with a loud mouth and a selective dick? Ben, amazing Ben, is not - Ben is Bev’s - Jesus fucking God. Ecce No Homo. Shut up, Richie.

“Yeah, uh, that’s really a talk for another time,” Ben says, and, holy crap, the man is crimsoning. You did it all right, Tozier. Talk of monthly embers. 

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay?”

“You win. I’ll stay for the clown-hunting soirée.” His voice a blueprint for _calm_. It’s very easy, Richie finds, to do the honourable thing with Ben - it just involves a little lying. Nothing a professional like him can’t handle.

Ben’s cheek thanks his, quickly, and then Ben is moving away, a less tall occupant in the mirror frame, until only his voice can be heard from the next room, fainter, something about Bev downstairs and waiting for Bill and Eddie to reconvene. Richie nods to the glass. _Goodbye, handsome. Forgive and forget. And try to live - both of you_.

Then he waits until the corridor is silenced, and pads away to where the fire escape awaits.

* * *

On the first morning of a radically altered rest of his life, Ben Hanscom does as usual and gets up for a jog.

Bill managed a plane in the nick of time, hugging each of them with one of his crinkly smiles that was dear to Ben’s heart even when the heart was collateral to the smile. Bill said to text him if the day passed without him giving notice; and then there were four. Three of them left Bev at the townhouse to settle the accounts while they took care of the Bowers business. 

“All bets off on a life sentence, ” Richie muttered. “If I upchuck on them. Oh sweet mother mercy, let me not upchuck on the Derry cops.”

“Hey,” Ben said softly, then, upon Richie’s mutter revving up, less softly. “ _Hey_. Look at me.”

Richie did, his pupils all but fibrillating behind their house of glass. One lens still cracked, Richie’s vulnerable self made blatant. Bev had washed the blood off them - Eddie’s blood - before she’d put them back on his face and followed with a kiss made slippery by the water, trailing down Richie’s cheek to the corner of his mouth.

Watching them connect, something in Ben had gone out. The exact opposite of his lost-and-regained memory of watching Bev with Bill, which had carved a gap with Ben’s name on it. Now part of Ben reached out to the connection; revived a pulse that had been at its fiercest in the Neibolt lair, when Ben had spotted IT doing Its obscene crouch over Richie’s face and mouth. He had stabbed at IT in the same frantic vein he would tap into when calling out to Bev - the same realization that, whatever Ben’s plight, the greater plight would be to stand by and watch their defeat. A pattern was born, that went beyond a hug in a bathroom or an underwater kiss. It was blurred, slapdash, it was bloodstained and - the worst plight - possibly unfair to Bev, whom Ben had and would always adore with his heart’s everything.

But it couldn’t be denied, the pattern.

“I’m not letting anything happen to you,” Ben said, still loud, “or Mike. I’m not leaving until both of you are safe and sound.”

“Well,” said Mike. “This is post-IT Derry, even by a short stretch. Chances are the, uh, local ethical fog has lifted.”

It had, insofar as the institution which had had the dubious honour of keeping Henry Bowers all these years had finally woken up to his flight and paged the Derry police with a detailed profile of their charge, including diverse KILL THEM ALL performances. The police still wanted to know why Richie hadn’t declared the corpse earlier, which was when Mike grabbed the mike (Richie, later) and sent them on the double blood trail in the townhouse. It might have been ethically cloudy to reroute Eddie’s death to Bowers, but Eddie would have wanted Richie in the clear. Eddie had liked all things clear and clean.

Once the sun pierced the fog, and the word “bail” was issued, Ben excused himself and called Bev.

“New kid,” she said, her voice ringed with tenderness. “Tell me some good news.”

As he did, he let _new_ bounce around the walls inside of him and fill the emptiness with new possibles. He asked about room service at the townhouse, worrying that the blood trail might have vanished. But the place, he heard, was still as they’d left it - a ghost mine, for all intents and purposes. Bev had written a bundle cheque, placed it on the counter and bolted. 

“Found us new headquarters,” she said. “Decent... ish. I can vouch for a human landlady, at least. She’s been eating a japalenos sandwich for the last ten minutes.”

“Sounds good. The ish, not the sandwich.”

“Mmm. So, how... how many rooms d’you want me to book?”

He took in the insecure uptick, the hot flush of silence. _D’you want me to_. Courtesy, only not quite. A quirk grooved into her by years of deferring to “his” wants before hers could take voice. Again, Ben saw her raising her bottle in a merry toast; again, watched her sleeve slip down the bruised length of her arm. 

(The summer she left, Ben went to the library and read _The Frog Prince_ twice over because it was her favorite tale. He’d thought he would sympathize with the frog, but ended up rooting for the girl, who had only wanted to play alone and free, not be made to share her bed and have her room fill up with the scent of pond mud.)

“That’s for you to say. That’s always going to be for you to say, Beverly.”

The silence changed; grew rich again. “We’re both new at this, you know.” 

“I know.” He let his breath exhale _I love you_ ; looked across the room to where Richie was calling his agent, still pale to the hairline, his shoulders hunched. “Here’s a thought. Book two queens and a cot, and let’s make a wake of it. Losers stick together.” 

“Oh,” she said, quick on the uptake, “how is he? I tried calling him twice, but...” 

“He’s getting out,” Ben said, making it a commitment as he spoke. “We all are. Do you need my card number for the room?”

In the end, they’d left the cot to its own business and shared the queens. Shared unalike, with Mike hogging one bed and the just man’s sleep. Richie went through his in fits and starts from the moment he pushed his face into Bev’s sternum, mumbled “You smell like grass” and groped behind him to drape Ben’s arm down and across his chest, safety-belt-style. 

It had been a chaste wake, each of them chasing sleep at varied tempos in that fly-by-night room. At three, Ben woke up to find that Mike’s tenor snore did not quite cover the whispered voices next to him. He closed his eyes again and let their grief and relief wash over him, unparsed; tried not to shiver when Bev’s hands touched his face on ebbing away from a caress down Richie’s. Richie’s voice had the same crack to it than when they’d both been young and thrown in at the deep of male puberty. Bev listened; then she shifted, like she used to when they swam in the lake, turning in the grip of water, and whispered in turn. Ben didn’t try to listen. He was aware - he’d been aware, ever since the toast and the loose sleeve - that in some as-of-yet-unspoken way, Richie could provide her with a safe confessional place while Ben couldn’t; not yet.

He waited until their first humid chuckle, and then he drifted back into sleep.

He did not dream of clowns. Instead, he dreamt of a treehouse. It needed work: a lot of it, Ben surmised, if only because the tree was of three minds about its essence. It was an oak - then a maple - it was a monkey tree, very dishevelled. But, through every whimsical change, it was beautiful. 

Its beauty will stay with Ben when he gets up, careful not to wake them, and goes out to run.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, my thanks to those who gave this rare pair a go.:)
> 
> I'm using King's book in a very lowkey manner, mostly to characterize Tom and Kay. It's okay if you haven't read it - the fic is still 80% based on the films. Tom's violence is alluded to, briefly, but he's not a major player here.

Connor Bowers, 41, single, next of kin, is having the worst week-end of his life. 

It all started with a call from the Juniper Hill Asylum, saddling him with Cousin Henry’s madcap flight, death, burial _and_ posthumous murder charge. (That call had a strong whiff of “Your turn now”.) Connor, once a dreamer of black belt exaltation before he settled for a grey apron and a pizza-by-numbers job, had to take his Friday off. And then - along the long dull drive up from Augusta - the memories mobbed him. Tame, at first, a gentle tweak ( _Sorry, kiddo, can’t afford the camp fees. But you’ll have fun with Henry - we’ve heard he has his own Scouts patrol or something!_ ). Then more staccato ( _Told you the curls would have to go_ ) and more ( _Hold still, you fucking fairy magnet_ ) - until Derry’s pastoral suburbs loomed up, inexorably unaltered, and Connor had to pull over, jerk the car door open and be sick all over the Queen Anne’s lace.

(Poison hemlock, actually. Not that Connor knows or cares about flowers.)

The next day bumps up memory lane. Connor visits the asylum; reports to the cops; attends the morgue, where he makes himself look Henry’s bloated face in the eye, wondering how loud their bloodline speaks now. Henry hated it; tolerated Connor in his father’s presence, but hated that Connor’s face showed what Henry’s had disowned long ago - a boy’s eyes, too naked in another boy’s presence, a large softhearted mouth. Connor had clothed his gaze and borrowed Henry’s lean mean mouth. Would have slapped himself bowlegged if it could excuse him from that knife.

“ _That_ knife?” the cops ask one after the other. Pictures are tossed Connor’s way; close-ups, too close for comfort. “The very same?”

“Yeah. Gift from his dad.”

Next they tell him how the knife backfired on Henry, and Connor’s eyes go wide. A tell - or enough of one for the latest cop to let it rip. 

“You know that Tozier guy?”

“Not really.” It’s not a lie. His summer fling with Richie was never quite that - one boy showing up at the arcade pat when the other boy had shown up the day before, only the other had already mirrored the act, that would be mirrored again, and again, a funhouse kind of tryst, warped by caution. He hadn’t even known Richie’s name. He certainly hadn’t given his. 

“Saw him now and then as a kid.”

“Ah.” The air feels chafed between them; unnerved, as the interrogator builds up to the next question. “Would you say he had any reason to hate Henry?”

There is no mirror facing him in the room, but there is a large window looking out, somewhat dustily, on the main hall. Connor stares, and the glass stares back, showing the ghost of a kid with tender, unblemished skin and a touch of buck teeth, pushing the arcade door with a bounce in his heart.

“No,” he says, foursquare, facing the cop. “No more than I had.”

He shuns the arcade. But this is Derry, where coincidence never strikes the same place twice, and the townhouse is currently shut down. Connor stops at the first hotel with a VACANCY sign; sleeps bad, sleeps in; locates the breakfast area fashionably late, yet just in time to spot Richie Tozier at one of the tables, sitting across a guy - a regular Hollywood hunk, if you ask Connor.

That it is Richie trying to outstare the limp spoonful of cereals in his grasp makes no doubt. Derry has revived young Richie’s face in his mind with dead-on accuracy, and Derry now vouches for his adult counterpart. Who looks exhausted. The other guy looks like he either stepped out of a shower or is about to model for beach trunks.

“... entitled to your victory lap, Ben. Besides, I wasn’t alone. Bev chaperoned me all over the buffet, but she’s gone out to call a girl. A girl called McCall. I smell limerick material.”

“You sleep okay?”

Richie shakes his head, his face cast in the bland light of morning. The other guy has a plate before him, stacked with a gluey slice of pineapple and three kiwi escorts. He’s ignoring them.

“Maybe we should take a walk. If there’s any place here you can stand to see again.”

“The kissing bridge.”

“The -” 

“Right - not your best - sorry, Ben. And you don’t have to, you know. I'll, uh, I'll gad about on my own. Only… there’s something I carved - fuck, _fuck_. Wrong verb. Worst verb. Shutting up now.”

“No, don’t - Richie, don’t shut me out. Tell me.” 

Richie moves his exhausted eyes round the room. They barely graze Connor. All the same, Richie’s voice drops under the radar and Connor eavesdrops after it. Not that he should. In fact, should he even be here? He has no idea if Richie is under some sort of restraining order with regard to Henry’s relatives. He doesn’t want to muck things up for Richie. If you ask Connor, Henry had that blade coming to him with bells on and a froufrou packaging. But now Richie is whispering “...and then I carved our names, no, not names, initials, because I was scared, Ben, so scared my heart was the fucking Chicago house scene”. He’s lost Connor there, except. 

Except Connor gets one shot at redemption, and Henry no longer wields the gun.

He grabs his room key and stands up. He clears his throat.

Two brown gazes flinch alert. 

“I want to say… and I’ll make this short, because I don’t think I’m supposed to talk to you.” He swallows. “On account of Henry. Again. So I’ll… I’ll apologize, okay? And then I’ll go. That day at the arcade, Richie - I was scared, too. Henry...” - and now he watches the recognition wash across Richie’s eyes like a tide, staining them a darker brown. Richie's mouth drops open. “I won’t say a word. I don’t care how or why you did what you did -”

“Man,” the man Ben says with sudden heat. “You need to stop now.”

Connor cannot, will not stop. “But what I did that day, throwing you to him and his pack. That wasn’t fair. I never thought of it again, dunno why, until I drove in yesterday. Now it’s all I can think of, the, the _hazing_ I put you through, that was so wrong. I’m sorry, Richie. For what it’s worth, I’m glad you found someone. You were the braver guy for asking me out, and seeing you with your man now, here in Salemville? Dude, that takes guts.”

“He's not -” 

Richie looks utterly stricken. But that’s when Ben covers his hand, Richie’s left hand, that’s been white-knuckling the table edge all this time. Ben’s hand - muscled to the wrist, a worker’s hand - spans itself over the gingham cloth, enveloping Richie’s. 

Ben says “He’s got me. He’ll always have me. Satisfied?” 

He still looks mildly fierce, if that’s a thing. 

Connor glances down at his reheated croissant. Then he takes himself out of this story with a middling to fair degree of relief that will serve him well once he’s back to Augusta and _The Three Pizzateers_ \- one of whom has been sending looks his way (and suggestively placed serrano peppers). Meanwhile, he misses on three things.

One: the beautiful redhead crossing, softly, from street to lobby.

Two: the golden tortoise beetle moving, slowly, across the landlady’s potted morning glories.

And three: Richie Tozier’s _cri du coeur_ of “But you don’t even like wangs!”.

The landlady, entering with Ben’s coffee, stops dead.

“It’s all right,” Ben tells her, equally flustered, as if Richie has just proclaimed him as a fussy guest. “I’ll just - don’t bother - no, really, I’m good. I’m good. No sugar. Oh boy. ” He smiles at the Derry-dour face above his cup, spots Bev and nearly ruins his case. 

“He’s good,” Richie, who hasn’t, tells the landlady. “He’s so good he probably hasn’t touched his -”

“ _Richie!_ ”

“- fruit,” Richie says flatly, “for stoic good reasons.” 

Bev steps in. She’s nine parts embers in the barley-yellow sun now pouring through the bay window, and though Ben can spot the part of shade coiled in the sweet hollow of her cheek, and worry about it, her brightness fills the room. She walks up to him and puts her lips to his easily - another morning glory, warm and fond and marvellously routine -, and then she goes to Richie and kisses him too: a lighter, corner kiss. “So,” she says. “Wangs?”

Richie peers back at her like a drowning owl. One, Ben realizes, that feels guilty about the stream, the tide, its bedraggled wings and the very branch lowered to it so it can catch it in its beak and be saved.

(Invisibly, the golden tortoise beetle takes a step.)

“It’s okay to like wangs,” Bev stage-whispers. “Trust me. A wang is a wang is a wang, and I’d rather they were liked properly than treated as slut ammo, which was always the problem with this fucking town. New kid, am I right?”

Which is when the landlady gives them up as a lost cause and exits, taking the kiwis with her as just deserts. 

* * *

And so they fumble through a talk that will stop and go, stop and go, after they buy Ben an apple and pile up in Richie’s car. The day is to be an Eddie day. Morphing into an Stan-and-Eddie day once Mike catches up with them in the afternoon, having hired a competent lawyer for Richie. (Mike’s A-list of contacts in Derry is a thing to marvel and freak at, alternately. “Goes with the territory,” Mike says vaguely, another peep at his twenty-seven years of survival. Then goes on to speak of alligator farms and the comparative breeding of lambs and crocodiles with the manic rationality that’s the hallmark of a Mike Hanlon.) 

To Ben, the day brings two emotions wrapped in one. They lean back against the car, he and Bev, while Richie roams the kissing bridge, then kneels down to it (“Is he... is he praying?” Bev asks, and Ben says, “Sort of”). The past is not over, or perhaps the past is all over them, trailing its foam of grief and loss like the water under the bridge - and beauty too, shining among the dirt, the memory of having loved and lost. And, at the same time, a new beginning. Ben thinks back to Richie’s hand, solid under his, and Bev’s arm, still pockmarked with abuse, tugging at him for a watery kiss. They make a pattern, the hand and the arm. But the pattern comes with a margin the size of a shore, covered with other patterns Ben did not make and cannot, should not erase the way IT did with their common past.

Instead, he offers a little of his own. It’s not easy. Ben still finds it excruciating to speak of himself after years of striving to squeeze himself out of other people’s notice. But here is Richie, the colour at last revived in his cheeks (the Maine wind, Bev agrees); and there is Bev, letting him light her cigarette (Ben found the lighter, Mike’s, in his coat pocket). 

“I ought to quit,” she says a little self-consciously. “Does my breath -”

He opens his mouth and she breathes into it, the way she did underwater. It’s all he wants.

Well, nearly all.

“Look at you two,” Richie says, sidling back to the car, “sucking lungs. You kiss like a goldfish, Bev. A beautiful redgold fish.”

“All on Ben. He tastes of apple,” says Bev, and then, with the same impish chutzpah she displayed in the Jade of Orient, dipping her chopsticks into his mouth, “want a bite?”

Richie looks hesitantly between one and the other. “Too fucking soon,” Bev mutters to herself. “Beep-beep, me.”

“No… no, it’s… he doesn’t...” And Richie, for the first time in his life, is left wordless. Mourning the man he never knew, Ben understands, and the boy he did - mourning Eddie’s snark, Eddie’s blend of fireworks and vulnerability, lost and found again only to be snatched from Richie forever. Richie had no time to discover who Eddie fully was, what he had felt, endured or gained during their long good-bye. All he has now is the knowledge that Eddie was hope incarnate... and unfulfilled. Loving, losing, loving, losing - Eddie made Richie’s pattern visible to him, a limpid, shadowy truth. 

Ben knows where the shadow lies.

“I do, in fact,” he says, turning apologetic eyes on Beverly. If there’s a scare left in Ben, it is to hurt one by helping the other. But she only motions him to go on. “There was - is - will only ever be one woman for me. I hope I don’t sound too much of a creep, saying this. I tried, of course - that is, I had to. The whole office tried to hook me up at one point. They feared I was turning into a one-man sect.”

“And so you kindly suffered to be taken on dates. Oh, Ben” - her mouth trembling around a laugh.

“Whoa. Wait, wait, wait, wait. That Reddit thread, the one that went viral - that was you? _Not naming names because he's famous, and looks a catch to die for, but he wouldn’t talk about himself, not ONCE during dinner. Only about plexiglas vs. polymers, and his dog._ They used that for my act, you know? Only with me it was playmates vs. poly...” And Richie peters out.

Ben throws wide arms into the day’s sun-and-wind. “I was very, very contrite. I sent them flowers the next day!”

“Oh, _Ben_.”

“I just... they didn’t do anything for me. Not their fault. But… see, when you lose as much weight as I did, it feels - sometimes, it feels like you let go of too much. Like a phantom limb, only it’s more of a full phantom. Phantom flesh, phantom body presence. And my house has many rooms, but there could only be so much of me in one room, at one time. So I turned to guys.”

“So I turned to guys,” Richie repeats, incredulous. He says it one more time, rolling it around his tongue like a rare and exotic vintage. “Just like that?”

“Yeah. They were good to me.” Ben has always loved simple words. _Fire. Heart. There_. Simplicity gloves the best truths - the Japanese poets knew this long before he did. Still, he struggles to add to them. Beyond the bridge, the carnies are taking down the gaudy red-and-blue feast, dismantling each ride into its plastic and steel basics. “They gave me what I needed. They, they, they enveloped me with their bodies, when the nights got too lonely, and... they made me laugh.”

“God, man -”

“I chose well,” Ben manages, half for himself. “Casual, not uncaring. At least _I_ cared, sort of. I couldn’t let them in too deep, core-deep, not after knowing you guys. You made it impossible.” 

In a way, his furtive encounters - never at home, mostly on the fly, always curtailed by his work agenda - had been the adult verso of his bond with the male Losers. Strange hands a continuation (different, yet reminiscent) of Eddie’s soothing touch when patching his wounds. Some stammered their raptures; others folded their clothes to the last inch of sock before they laid themselves down on Ben. 

And the ones he recalls best, for some unfathomable reason, were the ones who’d made him laugh. Ben Hanscom, a self-diagnosed melancholic, had found himself laughing time and again under a smart mouth’s quips or ministrations: laughed and felt a boy, even as his new muscles returned the favour. Brief, delightful respites.

He tells them this, then spends fifteen minutes standing guard in helpless laughter while Bev and Richie tag the Keene pharmacy’s back door with PLACEBOO bombing. Later on they join Mike for a waffle lunch, Eddie’s guilty pleasure. Next, a stroll in that part of the woods where Stan’s beloved songbirds still reside.

“That’s a wood pigeon,” Richie says, pat on the first coo. “And that’s a wood pigeon. And _that’s_ a wood pigeon.”

He’s got Stan’s voice pitch-perfect. Ben brays with laughter, until the tears glaze his sight.

“We’re making progress,” Bev confides to Mike sotto audible voce. 

“We are,” Mike says.

He has spoken to Bill and the lawyer on separate occasions. The former will fly back at their call, and the latter has rigged up a witness list that should do the trick if the ethical fog has well and truly lifted. This is still Derry, mind you - Richie must not expect a parade for saving the town’s honorary black citizen. But it’s _Derry_ , never a town to kick up a fuss over murder, and they’d rather bury the local scandal along with the town crazy than draw the public eye by going gung-ho on a national comedic icon. 

(Plus, the judge’s little girl is a trusty patron of the Library Storytime.)

“Good,” Bev says, and then she tells them about Kay. Tells them some of what Tom did to her friend after Beverly left, and Tom followed her trail like blood in the water. 

Listening to the tale, Ben’s fists close of their own accord. He unclenches them; wraps them around a boiled egg for safe measure. Once, still a kid, he roared like a lion at Bev’s tormentor. Now Bev needs him quiet; needs him gentle.

“I should go and be with her. I should testify. A stepping-stone for the divorce. But, Richie -”

“You and Ben go,” Richie says. “I’ll be fine. Mikey here has my back - well, down to a point.”

“You wish,” a jocular Mike says, but claps Richie on the shoulder. 

“You stay,” Bev tells Ben. “I don’t want you mixed up in Tom’s narrative. He’s finessed it to our friends for years, he's quite the storysteller. And I’m front and center with my -” 

The sandwich feels wrong. Cement to her gut. But the pigeons’ throaty calls make her think of Stan, who once faced a full-fledged congregation with the truth about himself. She can face her friends with Tom’s lies.

“- hysteria. Nymphomania. Shrew-ia. And, of course, I self-harm out of spite.” She lays the sandwich down on the grass. “As one does. Christ, you’d think the fashion moguls had less… Victorian views in this century. By the time I saw through his web, I was so far off the social radar I might as well have fashioned wimples. But he let me draw, so there was that. And I had Kay. Have Kay. Who now needs me.”

“Ben, you should be with her,” Richie insists. “Stand by your girl.”

Bev winces. She’s okay with Richie not seeing it, because he’s been smoke-screened by his own storytellers for years, the sorry bunch. Ben, who does, coaxes Bev’s truth out with a liquid plea from his eyes. 

“Richie. Honey, listen. I love the heck out of Ben - and you - but I don’t want to be a _your-girl_.”

“Ofben,” Mike quotes, ever the scholar. “Ofrich. Yeah, no. Sounds like ostrich.”

“You see, every... twosome I’ve been in, ever since my mom died... has been a Bluebeard situation. It’s broken me, Rich. It’s like I only find safety in numbers. Ever since.”

Richie doesn’t answer. But he mulls this over; cross-examines the present in light of the past; weighs Bev’s half-worded admission that her tender dalliance with _two_ boys, in the summer of their youth, saved her from despair. Then. And now? Ben is here. Bill, from what he told Mike, is pitting his best breaststroke against fate and re-wooing his wife. 

Well, then. Richie may be a klutz with relationships, but he’s legit good at numbers. You have to, making a quarter last an arcade afternoon.

“You go do your trial thing,” he says, pointing at Bev. “You need anything, you call me. Us.” He turns the finger on himself. “I stay here, do _my_ trial thing. You” - the finger moves to Ben - “mentioned a dog.”

Ben looks pretty torn. “Homey. I, I left him with my first associate.”

“Then you go back, and you get Homey. Hey, I got it right that first time, you know. We move. We move through what it takes. But we keep in touch, and once the move is done -” Richie stops, unable to carry on. It doesn’t matter, because Bev is hugging his head and shoulders above the grass, and Ben is coming up to them with love in his grip and a coda on his lips.

“We find a meeting ground.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Apologies: this took forever to write, circumstances not helping. If anyone's still here for my OT3, one happy-ever epilogue coming up. I guess the upside of being quarantined is that at least I get some writing time. Keep safe, all of you.)

_Hey Embers_

Hey honey

I trust you’re not texting from the Paddywagon?

_Moi fair lass, yer lack o’ troost is saddenin’._

...No way that’s what the Irish sound like

I should know

My mother’s name meant elf-strength in gaelic

_Is that why you had me wear a green tie at Court?_

No that was to accentuate your eyes

No jury could ever look into those butterscotch babes and convict you

Unless you were roasting the judge

Honey say you did not roast the judge

_I did not roast the judge Bev_

That’s my boy

_Not that much_

Richie no

_Loser’s honour_

_Only she asked why I hadn’t wrestled Bowers off Mikey_

_I mean look at me_

_You’d have to bribe that quarter to bounce off my belly_

_So I said, what, like Krav Maga?_

_And there I thought that was a George Lucas character_

Okay that one’s genuinely funny

How many more days?

_Four_

_The fun’s just beginning_

_You holding up Embers? You killing monsters out here?_

_Miss my best girl_

Miss you too honey

And you’re anything but Mr Podge okay?

It’s going as well as can be expected

Kay’s incredible. Holds the front, has my back

I’m lucky to have her

_Glad to hear that_

_It should be me, though_

_It should be the two of us_

There will be an us 

There will be an us again

There will

* * *

_[On a postcard featuring a treehouse in Nebraska. The card has an ultra-strong laminated coating.]_

To Richie Tozier, Esq.

The Rose of Derry Inn

Derry, Maine

“Be yourself” a friend wrote us

My vow shortens his 

From my heart’s treetop: be yours.

* * *

“Ben Hanscom speaking.”

“Beverly Marsh rejoicing.”

“Bev! Bev, oh, Bev...”

“On a burner phone. Appropriate, eh? I bought it in Derry before we left, which, not much of a derring-do, the clerk was up to his eyeballs in _Hustler._ Couldn’t ID me if they put him on the rack.”

“You go, girl. Jesus, it’s so good to hear your voice.”

“I could kiss yours. Put your head between my arms, kiss that sweet little hitch I’m hearing. Unless that’s the dog?”

“ _[Laughter]_ No, all me. Homey’s out on the hill, playing with the plough wind - there’s a storm coming in. They say I'm crazy to live in a glass house up here, but -”

“But that never stopped you from throwing stones. My hero.”

“Wish I still could, Bev.”

“Dear heart. Patience. Did Richie text you the good news?”

“ _Off the hook, ready to hook up. Eh, not everyone’s the fucking Bard_. You?”

“ _Two clowns down, one to go, ho ho tally ho._ By next week, hopefully.”

“You sure you don’t want me there?”

“No, I want you safe and away until they pronounce us ex and ex. Tom and me, that is. I’m dragging my past out by its ear, Ben - every day in court - and it’s not a pretty sight.”

“Maybe not. But you are. Beautiful, brave, our phenix girl.”

“It’s funny you should… wanna know a secret?”

“If you want to share it.”

“I've never drawn red. Ever. Tom tried to make me - he, he went full belt on me, once, over a contract with the Met Opera. _Tosca_. Said, You think the big spenders on the front rows will clap for your cobalt shit? Still, I couldn’t. But then your words found me again, Ben, and it’s all I can draw now. Only it has to be watercolor red. Which works - people think watercolor’s all pale and, and _prissy_ , and they’re so wrong. You can do flaring watercolors! Oh, I can’t wait to show you. Red line. Red wedding-dress. Red on red, and never twice the same.”

“Things of beauty.”

“And some green stuff for Richie.”

“ _[Laughter]_ He certainly looked dandy in that tie.”

“And it served him well! Now, what about Ben Hanscom? What’s his colour?”

“Oh, he. I. Er. You tell me?”

“Ben. Dear, darling heart. Meeting ground, remember?”

“Yeah, I know, yeah, sorry. Sorry. I’ll work on it, just, I’m not used - oh wait, I got it. Brown.”

“Oh, yes, oh, yes. Gray-brown?” 

“Mm-mm. Heartwood.”

“I like the sound of that.”

“Yeah, I... I’ve been dreaming of trees, lately. You know? Good dreams.”

* * *

_Richie Tozier added Ben Hanscom, Bill Denbrough and Mike Hanlon_

_Richie Tozier named the chat LOSERS COM._

_Richie Tozier:_ hashtagokaylooser

 _Richie Tozier:_ whatsapp doc

 _Richie Tozier:_ guys?

 _Richie Tozier:_ alone all all alone alone on a wide wide sea.

 _Ben Hanscom:_ ...did you just quote S. T. Coleridge?!

 _Richie Tozier:_ anything to get your eye bardling

 _Richie Tozier:_ btw he can thank his stars it wasn’t Doleridge

 _Richie Tozier:_ imagine handing out S. T. D. autographs

 _Richie Tozier:_ gives the Clap of Glory a brand new meaning

 _Ben Hanscom:_ see, now I know it’s real you typing

 _Mike Hanlon:_ he’s no impersonator, man, you got my word

 _Mike Hanlon:_ and Rotten Tomatoes’ if you need a second opinion

 _Richie Tozier:_ Mikey you wound me to the quick

 _Richie Tozier:_ anyway real Mike and real I are good to go

 _Ben Hanscom:_ now you have my ear

 _Richie Tozier:_ I have imparted the news to our loser queen, was hoping to catch the king of horror

 _Ben Hanscom:_ probably still horroring at 11

 _Mike Hanlon:_ no that’s when he takes a banana break 

_Mike Hanlon:_ for potassium

 _Mike Hanlon:_ according to both his 2009 and 2013 interviews

_Richie Tozier changed Mike Hanlon to Saint Stalker_

_Bill Denbrough:_ A banana and cocoa break, actually.

 _Bill Denbrough:_ Aka the potassium/magnesium double whammy

 _Ben Hanscom:_ ...after or before PA?

 _Richie Tozier:_ Girls girls you’re both healthy

_Richie Tozier changed the chat name to LOSERS CO._

_Richie Tozier_ : so the real reason real I summoned you all is - wait for it -

 _Richie Tozier:_ I sort of bought us the Neibolt house

 _Ben Hanscom:_ you what

 _Saint Stalker:_ you WHAT

 _Bill Denbrough:_ You did what?!

 _Richie Tozier:_ well not so much the house. I bought the land including and I quote from memory all underground slash subterranean property slash mines slash caves slash eldritch Bozo playground and de facto graves for our best beloved

 _Richie Tozier:_ I need Eds to rest in Loserland okay

 _Richie Tozier:_ and Georgie

 _Richie Tozier:_ if it’s all right with you Bill. I’m told we can make it a joint tenancy.

 _Richie Tozier:_ Bill? 

_Bill Denbrough:_ It’s more than all right, buddy 

_Bill Denbrough:_ it’s the ending I could never find.

 _Saint Stalker:_ Hear, hear. 1(one) evil clown tenant well and truly kicked off the premises.

 _Richie Tozier:_ Ben?

 _Richie Tozier:_ Ben this is what I need to move on please understand

 _Ben Hanscom:_ sorry man

 _Ben Hanscom:_ there’s a blur where my keyboard used to be

 _Ben Hanscom:_ and a Force 10 hug waiting in Ohama with your name on it

 _Bill Denbrough:_ You’re headed to Nebraska, Richie?

 _Saint Stalker:_ by way of Chicago

 _Richie Tozier:_ hold the chat lads there’s a starch-suited gent requesting yours truly 

_Ben Hanscom:_ Richie?

 _Bill Denbrough:_ Mike?

 _Bill Denbrough:_ Mike?!

 _Ben Hanscom:_ Richie?

 _Saint Stalker:_ Ben you need to disconnect and call me now

 _Ben Hanscom_ : Why what’s wrong?

 _Saint Stalker:_ Rogan’s lawyer has subpoenaed Richie’s phone messages.

* * *

**Richie “Straight Dog” Tozier Spotted Incognito With Fashionista**

**Adultery By Design: Rogan-Marsh Divorce Case Now a “Maine” Topic**

**“I Saw Something Nasty” - The Derry Innkeeper’s Tale**

“Hello and congrats on reaching Richie. Since you’re calling, you’re either one of the six people I’ve entrusted with this disposable number or God the Father, in which case I want my life back and quite a few others. Bip bippity fuck, y’all.”

**Marsh Trash Fire: Husband Claims Emotional Distress Compensation**

“Steve here. Unbelievable. The boys and I work to the bone to cover your homicidal home run, and now this? Sweet Infant Jesus, you owe me. Don’t care what a hot plate she is, you don’t go and burn your finger in that pie until it’s out of the oven, you fucker! Lie low, keep it zipped, let me deal with this.”

**_There Will Be An Us_ ** **: Always A Sodomy Junkie, Says Husband**

“Rich, honey. I’m not supposed to talk to you but, hell, I’m done with _don’ts._ And mad, honey, so mad, full-stomp crazy, _I’m seeing red_. Slam one door shut and he’ll slink back inside through any window crack. Twisting, twisting, twisting. Fuck, I’m not making sense, am I? And me, not seeing this coming. And Derry. WE SAVED THAT FUCKING TOWN! But I’ll get him. I’ll get him good, and he knows it, he… knows what I have on him, all the way up my sleeve, ah god. So leave him to me. Write a statement if you must, but keep it short, you hear me? Keep it to "we didn’t". Hell, I gotta go. Love you.”

**“Are You F… Kidding Me”: You’ve Been (Mc)Called Out, Sir**

“Rich? Bill here. I, uh, I may have punched a guy on your behalf. It’s okay, it was a very dark bar and he was half stoned and three parts drunk. But, he’s some cop or other from LAPD, and he was boasting of having, quote, cashed in on some, quote, raunchy pictures of you and Bev. I’ve no idea what he meant and he was too gone to make sense, but I thought I’d warn you.”

**Tozier-Marsh Midnight Bath Tryst: Leaked Pictures Go Viral**

**Sleazier than Fiction - The Truth About Richie Tozier**

**Richie Tozier’s Voice Cameo in** **_The Simpsons_ ** **Cancelled**

“Steve, again. Look, we’re putting the dam in damage control, but there’s only much we can do. And, yeah, I got your text. But you’re in no position to take the upper hand, you hear me? Now get this. All's not lost. I’ve been in touch with Rogan’s people, and I think we can jerry-rig a deal. Stay put and I’ll get back to you. And, Richie? Do _not_ sign on anything I wouldn’t approve.”

**Rogan & Marsh Trademark Dispute Tainted With Sex Scandal**

**Audra Phillips Wears “ ~~Rogan &~~ Marsh” Dress At Cannes Festival**

**“The Night They Broke My Turntable”: Fresh Revelations from Derry**

**Drugs & Sex & Bodies In the Library: The Jet Set Goes to Town**

“Hey. Hey, it’s Ben. Sorry about the early call, you’re probably still in bed, it was, what, four when we hanged up? Only, I’m flying out in two hours. Just me and the tech, and Homey. I’d hoped to get hold of you first, no, not hold, wrong phrasing. Richie, you know I mean it? That I’d never force you to do, or say, anything you’re not up to? Trust me, if anyone knows the harsh of it, exposing your naked self to the wrong people… But I can’t stay holed up in here. I need to be in that courthouse when and whatever the judge decides. So I’ll keep you posted, okay? Okay. Love you. _Love_ you, man.”

**“I’d Hit That Too” : Tozier’s (Male) Fans' General Consensus**

“Richie Rich! I come bearing good news. Dunno if you’ve checked your website today, but, me boyo, the hype is real. Real is the hype, and ours for the milking. Now, here’s the deal. Rogan’s lawyer has convinced him not to name you formally as co-respondent, because if he did, they’d have to drag you out to court and _that_ would bring the leaks into play, and who’s responsible for what, blah, blah, which would only prolong matters. That Rogan, he’s in for the kill. Wants it quick and merciless. So he’ll leave you alone. Meanwhile, Craig says he can fit in a few winks into your loser act. You know - “slip of the tongue landed me in shit again”, wink-wink, haha. Well, you know Craig, never one for finesse. Call him? And call me. It’s all for the good , Richie-boy - a scandal a day keeps the fanbase… here and happy, haha.”

**Richie Tozier Fires His Manager, Cancels Upcoming Tour**

**Richie Tozier To Testify In Rogan-Marsh Divorce Case: “It Rhymes With Day”**

* * *

_If, for strange reasons, you haven’t been keeping up with Beverly Marsh (formerly of Rogan & Marsh fame), let me be the one to break it to you: Ms. Marsh is on a roll. Having split the ampersand at the close of Fashionland’s most contentious divorce since the Dior & Galliano debacle and secured her trade name, she is launching new line MarshFire next winter. I’m lucky to catch her on the fly - literally, I’m told, as the 40-year-old fashionista is in a packing spree prior to boarding a private plane. Marsh, a houseguest at best friend Kay MacCall’s during their joint legal battle against Marsh’s ex-husband and “brand spouse”, points to her two sports bags and laughs. _

_“I’m travelling light these days,” she says lighty, gamely, elusively. “Especially as I went a bit overboard with these.”_

_“These” has to be a Marsh-brand euphemism for the myriad papers bursting to life around us - climbing the walls like fireflies, scattering their crimsons, wines and garnets all over the floor. A page has been turned indeed. For it is no secret that while Rogan & Marsh’s bold asymmetric lines have been praised to Paris and back, their palette sparked controversy before, with some savaging Marsh’s “crushed blues and bruised purples” with - in hindsight - disturbing on-the-nose-ness. _

_And now? Her range is a love letter to warmth. The MarshFire line, however, is not strictly red - or rather, the reds are cleverly tempered with lovely touches of green and shades of brown. At forty, Marsh has found more than poise or breakthrough. I bristle with questions that beg to be begged, but she is already stuffing the sketches into the second bag._

_“I’m going cold turkey on cigarettes,” she explains. “For the first time in thirty years. Smoking was - well, it was a crutch, until it wasn’t.” She hushes, and I don’t ask. “Some break out the chocolate when they quit. I broke out the crayons. Colours. Lipstick, even. Poor Kay had to play bodyguard while I went gung-ho on Maybelline.”_

_We go over the last sketch, a gorgeous red wedding dress. I tell her how my mother used to shake her head over the “passive-agressive brides” as she called them. But this dress is nothing but serene - it fountains naturally around the wearer’s arms and legs like a tender send-off, its cape embroidered with tiny leaves in Marsh’s new tricolour signature. I ask, did creating it feel like revenge? Not really, comes the answer. I look again, and ask if a breakthrough like this comes from knowing you are free._

_“No,” she says, her mouth moving into a smile with an insider glow. “From knowing you are loved.”_

_fashionscoop.com/angiepeck/beverly_marsh_five_reasons_to_buy_a_marshfire_dress_

* * *

So I was, er, I was given my pick of venues here in Chicago for my _[booming]_ Second Coming... _[mouthing]_ out.

_[Laughter, catcalls, a few boos]_

Look at that, I even get the trumpets. Now, if you’ve kept up with the news, you know the premiere had a very select audience. Basically, I stood in court, swore to tell the truth, they asked if I topped or bottomed, I said _porque no los dos_ , and then some big bearded gent with an even bigger gavel made the decision for me. _[Laughter]_ Don’t laugh. None of you fine Chi-towners grew up closeted in a hamlet with a Paul Bunyan fetish, I’m talking 31-foot Bunyan, towering over the City Center lawn with a great big whatchamacallit fork-you in one hand and an _[Dalek voice]_ EMASCULATE! attitude. The ‘tude, it nearly killed me. I’m not kidding you, I used to think, Dad, Mom, if only you’d raised me in Bangor, now that’s what I call positive reinforcement.

_[Laughter]_

Bang, or else. Bang or bust. Bang him, bang her, anything goes, bang or die, bang or get out, bang-bang, bang-bang! Me? I got to live under Bunyan’s shadow. They didn't have Babe the Blue Ox in Derry, though I must have inherited his missing blue balls, because I walked around with them for nearly thirty years. But yesterday? I walked out, fellas. Ran the gavel, spoke my truth, and here I am, in your aptly named Public House, out and proud in Chicago. _[Laughter, appreciative whistles, bursts of applause]_

And why did I do that? Why did I come out?

Well, to answer this, I’m gonna have to show and tell. See the beautiful girl at three o’clock, drinking the malt Scotch that compliments her hair? The one waving back? That’s my best girl. _[Puzzled silence]_ Yeah, there’s almost nothing I wouldn’t do for that one. Let’s review the classics. Jump down a cliff? Done. Kill a spider? Check. Kill a spider that doubles as a flesh-eating clown? _[Laughter]_ Bring him on! I’d de-clown an entire town for her. But there’s one thing I can’t do, never could, not in the wiring, and that’s lay down my stiffy at her feet. If we were, say, trapped in a Bill Denbrough novel, and the monster said _[deep voice, Igor lisp a la Pratchett]_ “Richie, your thtiffy or her life”, I’d have to pass. Of course I’d kill the monster then, but I’d have to do it with a softy. Sorry, Embers.

_[Laughter, one “I forgive you, honey”.]_

Now let’s turn to the gentleman also at three o’clock, the one doing a passable job of burying his head into his hands.

_[Laughter]_

He, good people of Chicago, is our childhood friend. Light of our lives. With the hot, currently red-hot face, and the Brazilian-approved legs. And, guess what? He’s _nice_. He’s such a good guy, people, it’s like God took one look at that menschalicious specimen and said, screw the rules, I’mma make an exception. I’mma make this one decent, and sweet, and true, I’mma have him wear his heart on his exceptional cheekbones.

Okay, I’ll stop here. I can see the tortilla chips on his plate ready to combust spontaneously by proxy. (Bev, stop laughing, you’re embarrassing the man.) Let’s just say that if he and I were trapped in the Bill Denbrough novel I happened to mention five seconds ago, I’d be telling - no, yelling at that monster, _Are you fucking blind? [Gales of laughter]_

But here’s the thing. My friends and I, we already have our own tale. It’s a tall tale, I’ll give you that. Very, very confusing at times. For one thing, it has me. _[Laughter]_ That’s right. These two? l’m their significant Tozier. _[Various and sundry awwws]_ And it’s been stop-and-go, our tale. It’s been a tale of adventure, and a tale of woe, quite recently, after an intermission that would put even George Lucas to shame. Only, at the time when it stopped - for reasons far beyond our control - others took it up. And they twisted it. Twist, twist, twist, twist. And in my case... I let them do it.

_[Silence]_

I... I voiced that crap, because it was the easier out. For me. I’m a fucking ventriloquist genius, okay? And I told myself it wasn’t so bad, telling the crowds Richie Tozier isn't girlfriend material, it wasn’t _not_ the truth, take or leave a few particulars. (For the record, there’s no filming device in my glasses. Primo, the last thing I want on my spank bank is ten-minute footage of my toes cramping with the effort to curl, which is what the angle would be likely to catch, and secundo, shit like that costs a packet. Who d'you think I am, Tony Stark?).

But still. It spoke me wrong, the crap. It trashed who I am and buried me deeper with every word, every new act. And when it began to trash my friends - badly - that’s when I was done. That’s when I knew. That I was, indeed, spoken for - but in the good way, y'know? The way that lets me speak for myself, speak from the heart. And so I did. And you know what? Once I started, nobody could stop me. In fact, I was halfway through describing my secret dildo collection when the Judge groaned and reached for his gavel - any likeness purely coincidental.

Richie Tozier, “Our Tale” in _Richie Tozier: The Second Coming_ , Chicago: Live at the Public House, 2016.

* * *

Chicago, July 15

All-clear flight. Nothing like our choppy jaunt to Bangor four weeks ago, that already feels like last year’s fever dream. Tech raised hell about Homey, but H. acted like the old trouper he is; lay down behind our seats and never fidgeted through the hour it took us to cross Iowa. Strong silent dog. His head on my lap now, grounding me as I write, one hand scratching his ears as the other scratches letters into the notebook propped against his neck.

Met up with Mike for a night bite. Bill's offered to come and testify, but the last thing we need is to feed the press more ammo. Mike says Bev holding up, but case at match point. Told him it feels like Derry all over again, wanting and failing to reach out while the nightmare catches up with her. Mike said ah well, daily rock fight, his lips sardonic. 

Tried Richie again, but he must have turned off his phone. Hope and pray Bill’s in touch with him. 

July 16

Today was Sunday, so H. and I went on a little reconnoitring. The trial courtroom is at the Daley Centre, another glassy monolith. Back in ‘99, when Brandon and I were starting up the firm, he had me submit a proposal for Chicago’s new Al Hitchcock High. Oh, they wanted high all right. I was in my “zen quads” period, so I offered them patios, white cement, a lantern-like library. They signed on two 99-foot towers with shiny fire exit staircases, then had to break out extra funds and case every stair with tempered glass after health & safety caught up with them.

Verticality = America’s space drug. How I miss my one-storey home. Our home? Whatever comes.

Midnight now. Sleepless. 

Can it be enough? Say worst case scenario. Will she let me donate - anything that helps her start again? A place, another name, money - anything. But how to offer and not be seen as Lord Bountiful? I don’t want either of them to feel they depend on me. 

Had dinner with Mike and Kay McCall, who cocked her bandaged face to one side and said Bev vetting for me was not enough, she had to see me with her own good eye. I liked her. I liked her even more when she took a long look at H. first. Then me. Said “Hmmm”, and “At least you’ll be invisible. Nobody ever remembers an architect’s face - I know I don’t.” I laughed and said, not only that, nobody can _name_ the architect in most cases. The French think Eiffel designed the Eiffel Tower. The Republicans probably think Trump designed the Trump Tower. 

(In retrospect, she was probably testing me. Good for her.)

She’d brought the latest press cuttings. Nine parts mud. Jesus God. Hasn't she suffered enough? I closed my eyes - saw her clear as day, that first day of summer - her smile, sweet, stingless, proclaiming me as more than Bowers’ scapegoat. Then I opened them. Saw Kay’s bandaged face.

“You,” said Mike directly, “are _not_ to punch Tom Rogan’s face into a pancake.” 

“I won’t if you won’t,” I told Kay, who said Bev had been there, done that, got him in the ’nads. (Good for Bev.) Also fuck the prescription, she for a gin cocktail. Left her and Mike to it and turned in early. Listened to Richie’s voicebox, one, twice, thrice. Trial starts at 10 tomorrow. 

July 16

Back at the Daley Center. Half an hour early, so I could find my way among all the xeroxed courtrooms. Mike came too, ready to stay outside in case H. was dismissed, but the usher looked at my dog, then at my face. Said, “Emotional Support?”, not even asking for ID. Well. Not exactly a lie. 

Next thing I knew, Bev was walking in, dipping her gaze to me as she passed our row. Kay had warned her not to, but she still gave it to me, all of it, her russet lashes, the deep green inbetween, god, so lovely. Another humid little kiss, before she entered the arena. I’d come to support her, and there she was, building me up. 

It was to have been the final day, but her lawyer stepped up to the judge and there was that fierce chomped muttering you’d think only happens in _Law & Order_. Apparently, he’d got one more witness flying in. Bev was smiling. Judge granted a recess.

And then all the phones started pinging one after the other.

July 17

I’m writing this so I can share it with them if they ask what I felt, how it was for me.

(Richie might. Never one to let sleeping elephants lie!)

I sat in the front row, invisibility be damned. A glad sob in my mouth, and Mike kept reaching out and wiping my cheeks with a tissue, tucking another into my hand. It didn’t matter, because even after it was all resolved, while I struggled up from my seat, I could feel my cheeks melting down again.

She found me first. All exultant tension. Her mouth, tasting of saltwater and (I think) lipstick. Then she unclasped one arm and I pivoted mine, so he could push himself into the gap. A sheen of sweat over his upper lip, for all his bravado: I kissed it first. There was Rogan’s voice, dying away in a shrill, but who cared? Mike was right. There are all sorts of ways to make a bully shrink; let _him_ taste invisibility from now on. Homey woofed him out, and Richie glanced down; said “Oh good, not a puppy”. Then Mike got in, and Kay, and that poor attorney, even as he tried to drag us outside the room.

So much to sort out. Trademarks. Gigs. Kay’s own _coup de grâce_. Flying schedules (Mike: “Can you all do me a favour and wait until Thanksgiving before you drag me out to court again?”). My own long-suffering agenda.

But we’ll make it.

July 21

Dreamt of those trees again. Beautiful.

Time to fly us home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben canonically flies his own plane in the book. I couldn't resist the visual.
> 
> Brandon, Ben's associate (and Homey's occasional dogsitter), is a wink to Brandon Crane - the guy who plays said associate in IT Chapter 2 and used to play young Ben in the 1990 miniseries.
> 
> In case anyone wonders who _did_ design the Eiffel Tower, the answer is Maurice Koechlin. Gustave Eiffel was the (admittedly clever) engineer who patented the design, then bought Koechlin's rights to it, ensuring that the tower would eternally bear his own name.


	4. Chapter 4

Their flight back is a doozy. 

The tech, after ten years of carting silent, saturnine Mr Hanscom from one top-notch building site to the next, has a near coronary on being met by a gorgeous redhead, a shaggy motor-mouth, a loud Homey, a lady who looks both dented and like she patented the business end of _no shit_ , a Black gent in a Fun in the Sun t-shirt, and finally his boss, grinning like he’s stoned up to the hairline. Next thing he knows, the simpatico little group is hugging farewell, with Homey taking pride of place in the melee, and boss tipping his tech a contrite wink above the grin.

(The tech half relents.)

“Nice ride,” the lady says. “But you better not crash my girl, Hanscom. Or you’ll have me and half of Paris haunting your Brazilian-brand ass.”

(Your what?)

“No crashing, noted,” says Mr Hanscom, and turns to the gent. “Mike. Man. Want us to make a call in Orlando?”

(Frantic _two hours’ gas sir_ signalling.)

“No,” the gent says, all the while embracing the boss like a long-lost brother. “Kay booked us a winery tour at six. Jazz tour at eight. Best seats at the Lollapalooza. I’m good, Benny-boy.”

“Losers _can_ be choosers,” Gorgeous laughs, and she and Shaggy and the gent _and_ the boss look close to sinking into the tarmac for a good cry or an everlasting cuddle. But fifteen minutes later Shaggy and Homey are both yapping happily, and boss keeps turning to shout over his shoulder and the headset. Forgetting that tech has the other headset. _See the sky, Bev? I’d hang the sky for you! Like a cobalt thought! I love, love, love, cobalt, Bev!_

 _(_ Jesus Cripes Almighty.)

Yet for all that he’s beaming and flying on every level besides the authorized 40.000 ft, Mr Hanscom sees them home safely. And hugs his tech, a for-real hug, before tipping him a straight hundred.

(Oh well. Guess they still know how to cook the good stuff in Chi.)

* * *

They pour out of the plane into a hired limousine that could host the entire Losers Club. Beverly, whose last forty-eight hours were spent packing, PR-ing and drinking Richie under the table so he could sleep off his big reveal to Chicago’s unDerrylike applause, sighs in relief. 

“I’m content to take a back seat,” she tells Ben when he offers her the car keys, dangling the ring like he’s about to go down on one knee. 

She is. She trusts him, she trusts Richie. She even trusts Homey, Ben’s old faithful, with his grizzled ruff and his 20/20 acuity of their love for Ben. Who did proceed with care during introductions, laying one hand on the nape of Homey’s strong-knit neck and whispering into the flap of his ear. But Homey got her. Even now, fresh from his decibel romp with Richie, the dog sits upright next to her, silent, guarding Bev’s nap. 

She dozes through the long drive, missing on the rugged-soft prairieland, until the car gulps up its last mile to Ben’s glass house and Bev wakes up clear-eyed. Still no dreams. Huh. Only a question, touching its wings to her sleep - _why Omaha?_ And Homey’s eyes answer, _Woods. Nature. Boys Town_ \- now in their rear view, a place once dedicated to hosting the young and orphaned. Closing her eyes again, she listens as Ben’s rusty pitch is crowded and tickled and chased and unflaggingly not let alone by Richie’s nasal tenor, and she smiles.

The warmth floods her. It’s still there when Ben stops the car in Nebraska’s sharper evening air and they all tumble out and into the suite of horizontal rooms. All pristine, all glass and spotlights, but… something about the structure… yeah. Those (moderately) low ceilings. Minimal furniture. The vegetation, in and out, real, pictured, everywhere...

Richie gets it first. “The clubhouse,” he says. “You went and built a one-person clubhouse” - at Ben’s flinch, he edits in the same breath - “for three.”

Ben smiles wistfully. “And with no memory of the real thing. That’s me for you.”

“I love it,” Bev says. She looks around, or rather across. “Fair warning: I pace when chasing an idea. So expect to see me pacing, from _here_ ” (the yet unexplored bedroom) “to _th_ -” (its undefined opposite, as Bev trips on something enormous and ground-level, and keels forward into Richie’s hurried arms).

“Is... is that a turtle?”

“A mammoth _solid_ _gold_ turtle. On the floor.” Richie, having steadied Bev, adjusts his glasses and crouches down. “Ben, darling, that’s positively camp.”

“It’s only gold-painted,” Ben says, at which point Bev, past resistance point, coaxes his chin into her hand and smooches him good. “I can explain!”

“I’mma look up your secret polyester,” Richie says gleefully, stroking dog and turtle in turn. “And your platform shoes. Do you pace in them too? Does the ceiling light thingy double as a glitter ball?”

“It’s just, I, er, I built the Kim Quy Meditation Center,” Ben tells Bev, his thumb barely hinting at the picture behind his desk. “In Vietnam. I got along very well with the monks, in fact, I stayed on a bit past my return date. Learnt to meditate. And circumambulate. Gardening, too. No WiFi, of course, not the concept, so I had to circumambulate down to Nin Binh once a week and liaise with poor Brandon from the post office. It was… they were _good_ weeks. Not happy, but peaceful. The closest I got to being in touch with others, which is what I want, Bev, now, with both of you. Anyway… when I left, they, er, they insisted on my taking their turtle deity home.” He pauses to scratch the back of his head, much like he does Homey’s. “I should have said no. I knew Customs would have a field day with it. But... I was taken with it. Myself. Sort of.”

“Not just you,” Bev says, smiling at Richie who, his hype suddenly drained, is now lying sprawled on the floor, his glasses capsized and his head lolling against the golden shell. 

The warmth, again. When he true-sleeps, Richie - unbelievably - keeps his mouth closed and his throat on vibrate, not quite a snore, more like a deep-seated purr. Homey doesn’t appear to mind.

They prop his head against Ben’s shoulder instead. Bev takes charge of his legs, which is when Ben remembers that his six-room deluxe home has no guest quarters. In the end, they half-drag, half-carry Richie to the Master Bedroom and rearrange him on the bed, still vibrating. Bev pulls off his shoe; Homey sits at his bedside, his jaw tucked over the mattress edge, undisturbed by the change of bedlord.

“Do you -”

“Not tired,” she whispers back. “Not tired at all.”

Ben smiles. “Come on, then. I want to show you something.”

They cross back into his study, leaving the door ajar. Ben touches a command in the wall, plies the spotlights into a fainter gold. Not the studied vintage Led of her Chicago house, more like… oh, but Ben is walking her into the next room, and the next, every communicating door left open, until they reach the last room with its long couch and another painting of trees - brown trunks, red and green leaves. 

“Taking a shine to this place of yours, Ben Hanscom.”

“Ours. And, speaking of shine…”

He is touching more secret commands and the wall next to Bev comes to life under his fingertips: a bed of coals, kindling tiny flames in the carved recess. “Electric,” Ben says apologetically, patting his embedded fireplace. “I, er, I’m a bit of an environmentalist. Goes with the job. And territory. And a chimney pot would have stuck out like a sore thumb. But... I had my heart set on this.”

She is in his arms, on his couch, basking in his voice. 

“July embers,” she says, and kisses the warmth on his lips.

Her summer coat stayed four rooms away. Again, Ben touches the wall; the obedient lights fade away, only the bed of reddening coals. She touches her own hair, feels it radiate. She remembers how he made it beautiful for her again, another summer, after Alvin Marsh left his breath on it. 

She opens his mouth to her kiss. 

“Will this be,” he says, no, babbles, the air between them again. “All right? Not too much?”

The question englobes more than him touching her - mere fingertips, as of yet, to the back of her hands while they fumble with zips, his, and buttons, hers. Their breaths catch up with each other. She undrapes the shirt from his shoulders; feels the hard planes of his chest, complementing his softhearted mouth. This, this is the body Ben patterned and built through two decades, another house for one, bar those furtive encounters…

... and no woman before her...

She thinks, _Richie would so make a virgin joke_ , and only feels more, different joy layered over the heat. As if reading her, Ben whispers, “I’m the virgin here” even as he expands his touch; his hand cupping the secret curve of her thigh, answering its open invite - oh, he’s good, he’s so good - with its whole span. Melting and stirring places in her that Bev thought were long gone dead under Tom’s attentions. She covers his hand and guides its tip to her clit - she murmurs and he follows, wooing it for long minutes, until the spotlights - the ceiling - the red-rose coal shadows on the upper wall - all of them, circling to the rotation of that finger, and Bev cries out. 

“You,” she cries, breathtaken, “you, Ben, you”, and the melted heat trickles over her thighs. He strokes them, takes it to his mouth. On his face she licks another salt. They’re both too long-legged and too active for the couch to do: but the rug will, wide and thick enough that she can push her knees into it, one on each side of him, and haul herself poised above him. And Ben lets her: only lifts his elbows so he can offer his hands, palm up, to her grasp. She takes them, and feels his strength penetrate her wrists, but only so that she can use it as leverage, the slide all hers.

“I’m clean” falters out of him, and “It’s been...”, crossing her “I can’t have kids”. They pause; hover on the thin line between pang and jolt, before she pushes fiercely on his muscles and rises, falls, rises in the fireglow, watching Ben’s face and its naked dance of emotions. He is holding back for her, his mouth stretched with the effort, and he should be looking stupid doing it, but the sight only strokes the dead place deep-buried in her: strikes it like a match, one long, triumphant squeeze of muscles and nerves as she arches backward and cries again.

Then they let go of her, the nerves and muscles, and she flops down gracelessly on Ben. He came when she did, matching his cry to hers; the vein on his neck beating like an aftershock. After a while, they both hear Richie’s breath, four rooms away, joining theirs from a chaste distance.

They laugh a little, and Bev nods into the vein at Ben’s unasked query.

“Totally all right,” she tells him, and gets a happy noise from his throat. They clamber back onto the couch, still a narrow fit, and doze off soon after. But the answer must have sunk in, because when she wakes up she's lying next to Richie, clad in a man's clean, soft-worn cotton shirt, Homey stretched between them like the proverbial sword - a very hairy sword, and, in their case, vastly superfluous.

Ben is struggling up from the bedside chair, whistling softly for his dog. Bev lets herself drift again. When dawn turns to day, she wakes for good, Richie’s warm hand waking along in hers. 

* * *

She is wearing another of Ben’s shirts when Richie joins her in the patio, unfashionably early. 

He pauses to take stock of her. The shirt falls too large across her shoulders, obviously, and she has rolled up the sleeves past her wrists. But it has an easy look on her. Bev doesn’t wear a man’s shirt the way girls did when Richie was in college - as a morning-after trophy or a prop, a way to flash vulnerable slimness around. The shirt, like Ben, is one part rugged to nine parts Snuggle teddy bear. Bev wears it because it’s soft on her (like Ben) and leaves her arms free to rummage across the tabletop.

“Hey,” Richie says, taking in the honey, bread, coffee pot, notebook, pencils, pocket palette. Of the two glasses before her one is popsicle orange, the other chrome yellow. “I’ll take juice number three, Alex.”

She looks up and waves, then stretches both arms behind her head, long and happy. Her mouth does that thing he never saw in the garden variety porn Richie dosed himself with at one point (apply morning and night) - that breaking into smiles against itself, after the fact, in secret dreamy reminiscence.

“I’ll say,” he says. “Somebody got some last night, and then some. Kiss and tell?”

He sidles up; bends down; feels her mouth touch the spot under his left cheekbone he thinks of as Bev’s Corner, before it brushes his ear. But then she’s shoving him back, laughing, saying, “I’ll let you find out for yourself”, and Richie is taken aback.

She's beautiful, he is - he is _Ben_ , a king-size heart in a M-size shirt. Can she mean it? Richie lives in L. A., where they churn out happy-ever-afters like autos on an assembly line. They’re Bev and Ben. Any rom-com writer - and Richie met quite a few on his pilgrim’s progress from gagman to stand-up - would drool at the paronomasia and order them to do the honourable thingy, i.e. marry, have seven kids, and name them Bel, Beth, Bey, Beep, Bec, Bex and Richette. (What? He’s their best friend.)

“Richie?”

“Fairy tales,” Richie says hoarsely. “You loved that shit, Bev. I remember now. You had that book in your room, and once, when it rained all of a week, you brought it to the clubhouse because I’d run out of _Cult Classics_. You read it aloud and I know Ben went and read it all over again in the library because he told me, the dweeb.” 

She puts down her pencil - she’s been filling in some froofy frock or other in the slapdash way of designers not caring if they color past the lines - and stares at him. 

“... _The Frog Prince._ ”

“Yeah. My point being -”

“A sudden case of cold feet?”

The coffee smells rich and earthy, and Richie helps himself to it. He has a choice of two mugs, both white, both with a Hanscom & Associates reminder. Huh. 

“Look, you’re happy, okay? And I’m glad you are, babe, very, very glad and relieved, just worried I’ll snafu your deal. It’s not like fairy tales ever rooted for threesomes.”

“Hmm,” Bev says, the smile insisting. Secret, yeah, but no longer dreamy. Teasing, more like. “About that...”

“What?”

At first she doesn’t answer. And when she does, she speaks from that fresh vein of memory that welled up at the door of the Jade of Orient and never ran dry again. Her voice, Bev’s voice (its _gamin_ pitch kept well into her woman years), taps the vein and tells the tale.

Well, not the whole tale. She hops right to the end, once the frog is revealed to be a hottie, and he and his princess are riding home in a limo with eight white horses. 

But not alone.

For with them is the prince’s companion, Faithful Henry - though Bev, kind clever Bev, had named him Harry - whose heart had been near broken upon losing his mate. “So banged up,” Bev says, “that he had three iron bands welded round it, yeah, don’t ask me, guy stuff. Anyway. The carriage rode away, the prince and princess happy as Harry, who was equally hyped to be there with them. So hyped that the iron bands cracked open one after the other, and the prince asked if the carriage was breaking down, being of a practical and engineering mind. And every time Faithful Harry answered, nope, only my heart swelling with joy because I have you back - and the carriage is doing just fine, carrying the three of us.”

“Oh,” Richie says, because he remembers, now, he remembers it all. How the rain’s pitter filled the pauses in her voice; the whiff of her eternal cigarette among the cabin dust; Eddie’s staccato commentary about kissing batrachians and the odds of warts. It was then, it was there, as Faithful Harry told his prince about his tumescent heart, that Richie had braced his own and taken an arcade resolve.

It's no longer _then_. Then, Bev had been smiling at the wrong prince; Richie’s _very_ unwelcome stiffy, while listening to the epilogue, had also been courtesy of another Loser. But it's the same teller. And he will trust her tale.

He looks up again at the sky, gleaming blue over the patio. Funny. It was pretty much the same colour in L. A., and most of the time it felt to Richie like an angst-coloured sky. This? Is a Yahtzee-coloured sky.

“Embers.”

“Hmmm?”

“I froggin’ love you.”

“Right back at you, Harry.”

* * *

The days slip by, cobalt blue, a pine tang to the air. They cobble together a routine for their _mariage à trois_ , still only half consummated. The cobbling ends when they discover how easier it is to treat it as a three-ring circus, each of them juggling with their creative streak and an ear perked to the other two. They all rise early (to Richie’s surprise: it’s been years of hard, late partying so he could knock off the mornings of his solo days and skip a solitary meal). They cook one another breakfast. Bev grows enamoured of Ben’s home-baked bread. Ben turns a kind blind eye to Richie’s version of the 5-a-day mantra, i. e., five blueberries in a short stack. 

The house soon becomes a mess. In the early days, Bev and Richie make coloss-ass (Richie) efforts to tidy up in their wake - until Ben sits them and explains that while he is grateful, no, really, that Richie keeps his briefs out of the kitchen sink and Bev labels her painting glasses, he is even more grateful for the paper trails, the misplaced cushions (Richie’s best lines come to him when lying on the floor), the ruffled bed, Homey’s excited bark. He never wanted a pristine house. He wanted a house dishevelled, shared, a house lived in. Look at him! He is radiating gratitude!

In the end, they deal out the rooms on a rota. The living-room goes to Richie in the mornings, the couch a kinder alternative than the hammock to his aging back. Bev commandeers the patio until cocktail hour. And the study is still Ben’s, to take video calls and face a glaringly pressing agenda. 

“I can handle the mall contract," Brandon says, ever his stoic frontman, "now they’ve toted down the walls. But London called again and won’t take no for an answer.”

The BBC Communication Tower’s tenth anniversary, coming up in the Fall. And gone clean out of Ben’s mind.

“I’ll go if you won’t. But they won’t like it much better.”

“Don’t.” Ben glances over at Bev, thinks Portobello Road and Camden Market; pictures Richie in a bowler hat, swinging an umbrella, living the P. G. Wodehouse dream. He musters a breath. “Tell them I’ll be there.”

“You’ll - what, really? Ben, you do realize there’ll be _people_?”

“I do,” Ben says, a marital vow. Bev and Richie - they’re public people. They know how to work a crowd, and they both enjoy the work. Not right now, no - right now they’re enjoying Ben’s hermitage after weeks of exposure that left them raw and vulnerable; they want a nice vacay far from the madding crowd. But at some point they’ll both feel the itch to reconnect with the world they left behind, and how can Ben deny them? He owes it to them to keep pace and stop hiding behind a cam. 

He also owes Brandon one hell of a paid leave. 

“Just tell them, I may not be travelling alone.”

That same day, he asks Richie if the latter needs a trip to L. A. They bought the requisite toothbrushes in Omaha, along with other bare necessities, but Ben tries to keep in mind that Richie has a home in California.

“ _Beverly_ Hills,” Richie edits, patting Homey’s head. “And the name was the only thing that felt like home. Couldn’t figure out why. Thanks, handsome, but no thanks. There’s not much there that’s mine, anyway, saving the booze and regrets. Even the furniture was rented. Hi-diddle-fuckin’-dee-dee, eh dawg?”

But the artist’s life is shaping up for Richie. That Simpsons cameo is back on the table, and enough of _The Second Coming_ came up on YouTube that there is talk of a podcast - the first step on the not-so-long march to the Richie Tozier Talk Show that is still to come. On a night when Richie’s mind feels like a roulette wheel of zingers - fast, feisty and fucking funny, if you ask him - he stays out of doors. Swathed in blankets, his feet up on a deck chair, he stares up at the sky and its gift of stars until his mind feels night-clear, sleep a faraway country. 

Then another, larger night light goes up in the house basement. Ben’s in the gym.

Ben is exercising - burning the midnight, no, one o’clock oil (Richie checks his watch). Why is he not sleeping?

Or, wait. Does Ben wait until _their_ sleep to exercise?

Richie shakes off the blankets; shuffles up to the glass door that connects the patio to the basement part of the house. When Ben gave them the grand tour, Richie’d asked if here be another Cellar of Doom, and Ben had built on the joke as an excuse to skip the room. Bev prefers hiking, anyway, and Richie avoids health clubs on the excuse that they’re a boner-inducing liability. So the gym, like the study, is all Ben’s. Now Richie’s curiosity is aroused. 

Okay, so maybe curiosity’s not key here. 

Still…

He takes a glance through the glass window that turns into a genuine, Tom-of-Coventry peep. Ben’s thighs are right there across the glass, gleaming and naked, and slow-mo making love to each other as Ben pushes his knees up into a squat. Oh fuck, he’s in shorts. And a long-sleeved T-shirt plastered dark with sweat. Richie’s gaze tiptoes up as Ben lays back, then leans forward, mimicking ample thrusts that push him deeper into Richie’s... fancy, yeah, but still slow, still focused. Richie’s self-educated guesses on gay sex always trended on _hard and merciless_ , but they’re proving hard to fit in with Ben’s careful slides. When dating the girth of his palm, or all three knuckles of his finger, a younger Richie could only come from a sick cocktail of stress and endorphins. Derry’s golden handshake upon his leaving it, ensuring that he’d mix up the hounding and the pounding, the prey’s rabbity heartbeats and the runner’s high that allegedly results from a nice long shag. 

Ensuring that he'd never put the mix to the test.

Now he tries to catch Ben’s profile above the strong neck. But Ben keeps rowing against some invisible tide; keeps looking ahead, until Richie sends the past to hell and raps on the glass door. Only then does Ben turn his head, and, upon seeing Richie, smile so wide he might as well have lit up the fucking house, and the woods behind, all through, until the light joins up with a dawn still hours away. 

Richie tugs the door open and steps in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone still here for my rare OT3? Because I promise next chapter is the actual, honest-to-god epilogue. Ahem.
> 
> Also Ben does have a mammoth golden turtle in his study - though it's a blink-and-you-miss-it detail in the shot when he takes Mike's call.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: all right, let's make this short and sweet, says, 1000 words?
> 
> Also me: writes 6000 words and has to split the epilogue.
> 
> But we're done! Again, thank you to all of you who read and commented - and here's hoping you like the ending too.

“Hey,” Ben says, unstrapping his feet from the rower. His voice is a hum around the smile, scratchy and intimate. “Sleep bailing on you too?”

Richie doesn’t answer. The passage between Richie’s lungs and his throat is currently a danger zone, crossed with two contrary impulses - one making his breath rasp from a pang that’s also a delight, and another, older, to shield the pang at all costs. If Richie speaks, he’ll quip. Ben, not a natural, will labour to return the banter, and the delightful thirst will thin and dull, leaving Richie still parched, but in a safe place. 

Except... Ben _is_ his safe place now. 

And so Richie walks up to where Ben is standing; inhales hard, marveling that Ben’s essential sweetness is running even out of his pores. Touches the soaked cotton where it adheres to Ben’s heart. “Fuck,” Richie says - soft, wondering.

“Sorry,” Ben pants back. “There’s, uh, still some of me left to melt.”

Richie is shaking his head, is bending it to put his mouth where his hand was and mumble words before Ben’s self-consciousness engulfs him again. “I wanna suck it.”

“Jesus,” Ben says, and then he’s flinging one arm back, Richie’s nostrils mobbed by more sweetness as Ben reaches out to the wall bars behind him. They shuffle together, Ben anchoring himself to the bars while his other arm pulls Richie closer - pulls him up - gives his mouth license to suck at Ben’s neck (also running with a heady sweetness that trickles into Richie’s mouth, down his lungs, to his own heart). Ben’s chin prickles his lips, Ben’s trembling mouth...

“Finally, Richie, finally, _finally…_ ”

A word that’s voltage to Richie. His glasses are past recovery by now, steamed up to the rim, so he lets Ben take them gently off his face and hook their branches together onto an upper bar. It’s all right: Richie’s sense of touch is fanning out, making him privy to the white-hot flesh of Ben thighs, encasing one of his legs and the still ripple of his cock, putting its Spandex casing to an extreme trial of elasticity.

Ben’s arm is stretched and taut along the ladder, holding both of them vertical as he speaks low, speaks intent. “What you want? What you need? Take it. All of it, Richie, anything goes, okay?”

But Richie only lets his knees take him all of gravity’s way, his mouth open too and trailing down Ben’s chest. Because _fuck_ may be the signet ring to Richie’s voice, but _love_ expresses Ben, and Richie is this close to baring Ben’s midriff and tonguing R+B over the ghostly H. Instead, he rests his forehead on Ben’s still-clothed stomach, before his knees hit the spongy foamy thingy cushioning the cement. Ah, Ben. Always the carer.

Richie lifts his forehead and peers up at Ben’s face, letting his own beg for him.

“Anything,” Ben repeats, and then Ben’s hands are casing his shorts, releasing them from their straining duty and - oh god, he knew Ben was old-school, but exercising commando? When Ben's current stiffy is enough to put even his beloved Nebraska pines to shame?

"Uh... Richie?"

"Fuck," Richie says, hoping Ben can hear the subtext paean. "Somebody _did_ grow into his looks."

He takes the entire growth in one swallow, or tries: his thirst demands no less. But his novice throat won’t let him; his mouth watering from its swollen bounty, Ben’s cock - clean, but anointed in scents that swirl Richie’s head, his eyes watering along as he bursts into an undignified fit of coughing. 

Large hands on his cheeks, pulling him back, gently, until he is breathing again and his ears are being stroked with light touches. Ben’s voice, fond, steadying the dizziness. “Shhh. Just play the head, baby.”

“I can do this,” Richie insists.

“Have you done it before?”

“... Banana,” Richie shortcuts. Dimly, he senses Ben’s abs vibrating with laughter; Ben’s hand on his head, still stroking, giving infinite leave. Eyes closed, Richie lets himself have what he wants, which is everything because _what_ fills more than his mouth; fills the Richie-shaped gap within Richie by flooding his groin and his heart with Ben’s humid little cries. Richie plays the head with all he has; finds and traces the thick, sensitive vein underneath, and Ben’s cock rewards him with a first gush of heat, right before Ben pushes him back and takes himself hard in hand, a second before he _fountains_ all over his fingers. 

Richie’s dick fairly thuds at the sight.

Then he is being gripped and pulled, tenderly manhandled onto his wobbly legs, while Ben’s not-sticky hand busies itself with his zip fly. Richie’s mind, a happy slugger until now, flashes up. 

“Ben - wait!”

Ben’s fingers still at once. “Yeah?”

“I can’t,” Richie mutters wildly, “Not the impaling bit, not after, ah. Fuck. Too soon. Do you even keep lube here? Jesus fuck, you’re so hot. I’m a fucking snafu.”

All of this over Ben’s crescendo “shhh-shh”, until Richie is breathless and Ben is parting his legs, his magnificent gleaming thighs, only to rub his sticky palm to their inside and add to the sweat. More shuffling, until they have traded positions : Richie's back to the Swedish ladder, his dick still in peak if plaintive condition, swiftly encased between Ben's thighs. Ben closes them, tight enough that Richie’s dick is padded by slick warm flesh left and right. Then he grabs Richie’s hips and lulls him into play.

They rock backwards and forwards, he and Ben. Once he’s set the pacing, Ben folds his hands on either side of Richie's head, around the wooden bars, and uses them as leverage to rock himself harder. It doesn’t last long - there’s no way he can, not with his forehead crushed to Ben’s shoulder and the whole of him juddering with sensation. He thinks that he’s shouting “fuck”, unless it’s “love”, or maybe “Shall I compare thee to a Maracanã digest”, but whatever it is, it’s enough to draw a long, lancing jolt of pleasure that racks him like never before in Richie’s solo dabblings.

Later, the two of them slumped atop a pile of gym mats, he strokes Ben's thigh once more and says “soft.” What he really means is, he’s glad something of the boy Ben has lingered on, but it’s okay. It’s Ben. He always gets what you don’t know how to tell him.

* * *

Bev gets it, too. That is, Bev spends the next day whistling “Let’s Hear It For the Boy” around her candy cigarette whenever she passes Richie.

* * *

Thereafter the gym is marked out for Ben and Richie’s love-ins, just as the fire room is Ben and Bev’s den, a place to lie in each other’s lap and read poetry (Ben digs up his old haiku notebooks). The rest of the basement is threesome ground, once it acquires, in no particular order: a hammock, a video game console, a sewing machine, yo-yos of sundry shapes and sizes, the Horror Movie Classics: Collector’s Edition, a beer icebox, a foosball table and three Montana bikes.

On irrepressible second thoughts, Ben adds a few sofa beds. Who knows where Mike’s interstate gallivanting might take him, and Bill and Audra did promise to visit. Kay is a self-proclaimed glamper, and Brandon needs to hug a tree twice a year to atone for the new polyurethane craze. Ben’s days as a hermit crab are officially over.

The August days are all sun; painting Beverly’s nose and Richie’s forehead a bistre pink despite Ben’s warnings. Ben is still on the watchout for a restless leg syndrome, but the MarshFire line is shaping up beautiful, of course it is, and Bev seems content with taking flying lessons in Omaha. 

“Time to float with a difference,” she tells Ben (he loves her). 

She has found new suppliers in Omaha, a city with its own Fashion Week. Ben’s house, correspondingly, looks like it’s been taken over by "a glut of psychedelic silkworms" (Richie). Homey goes missing for two hours one day and is found nesting under a mockup of the famous wedding dress.

Bill’s novella _Seven in a Sewer_ floods the horror market at the peak of August, leaving most reviewers voiceless. (Not so Richie, as the BBC will soon find out.) _The New York Review of Books_ , once of the opinion that “compared to a Denbrough ending, Jackson’s _Lottery_ reads like _Polyanna Goes Voting_ ”, sobs its praise of the gentle, soulful, hopeful narrative. The book cover is - surprise, surprise - a storm drain, but instead of a pavement strafed by rain, the drain is embedded in a prairie with half a yellow sun on its horizon line. Richie’s copy comes with a scribbled LOSERLAND across the prairie; he tosses it up to them, says “Fuck” feelingly, and pushes his sunburnt forehead into Homey’s warm neck.

“We’ll see him in London,” Bev whispers to the general warmth.

* * *

London in September is cooler, but not unpleasant. It glows with red buses and red phone booths, and ye olde red geraniums around its front doors and windows: Bev loves the sights. Richie’s transient chagrin at Homey’s absence is soon eclipsed by Ben’s more horrified realization, on the anniversary night of the BBC Communication Tower, that he is to communicate.

Worse: he is to self-present.

“Oh god,” he keeps saying, his baritone stretched so thin they can hear his heartbeat right under, “oh go-o-od”, until Richie steps into the crumple zone; grabs Ben's shoulders; straightens them perforce, and tells his love, “Hey. One, you faced the deadlights, and two, just pretend the reason they’re all so po-faced is they’re holding back a fart the size of an adult Dalmatian.”

The self-presentation passes with flying colours, despite the speaker’s valiant effort not to laugh.

“My hero!” (Bev)

“You’re welcome." (Richie) "Can I tell the poly-urethra joke now?”

“Not in your Queen Liz Voice. Oh, look at him smile! Our Bentiful.”

“A pun, a pun, a palpable pun! You’re learning, Embers.”

“This is crazy,” Ben says at last, his grin exhausted but irrepressible as he sinks into their arms under the applause. “Did I laugh? Is Bill here? Somebody saved me a beer? Oh, and apparently I am to be knighted.” 

Pat on cue, Bill and Audra show up, having considerately waited out Ben’s speech in the back rows. More yawps. More hugs, watched from a safe distance by the Brits. Two tall redheads face each other and their patina likeness, sharpened by the candlelight… then decide, both at once, that the likeness is theirs to rewrite. Bev and Audra smile, reaching out to each other. Meanwhile, Richie has launched into a voiced rendering of “Rick Squishes the Sewworm”, in his opinion the _pièce de résistance_ in Bill’s novella, and the Brits next table are all ears. So will Studio Ghibli two years on, when adapting the BBC radio play into that haunting, charming anime called _Love and Loss_ … but that’s another story.

They stay three more days in London, long enough for Audra to get them a private Harry Potter Studio Tour at Leavesden, where Richie pilfers the merch. Whether Audra means the tour as a tease or a _This is me meeting you halfway in my best supernatural capacity_ remains unclear. Richie’s aim is more obvious. He buys a Ravenclaw scarf, mumbling “souvenir” to Bev’s raised eyebrow. Then Bill does the same, and Bev’s face softens.

“Stan,” she mouthes over to Ben, who nods, remembering the boy they knew - the pale boy with a quickness for books and puzzles, who had loved nothing more than his birds. (And his friends, and his friends, and his friends.)

He watches as Richie snags two crimson-and-gold scarves next, Eddie’s red badge of courage. Richie donates a scarf to Bill… and bites his lip. Ben tracks his gaze to the next stack; holds his breath in sympathy. All the scarves are one-size-fits-all, but above the bright yellow Hufflepuff pile is a notice informing buyers that they'll also suit children age five and up.

Bill takes two of them, gives Richie one in silence.

“I’ll rig up a coat rack home,” Ben tells him. “Meant to, anyway. It gets nippier in the fall.”

“Thank you, brave Sir Ben,” Richie says softly. And takes Ben’s hand, and does not let go until the pub.

* * *

On they move, the Losers, hunters and gatherers of closure.

Bev makes a bevline to Paris, trading roles with Audra as she mentors her "twin celeb" (Richie) through _la_ Fashion Week. Ben flies home to Homey. Richie stays in London to do voice tryouts - piling velvet over witty over puckish over fuck-ish and (mostly) getting away with it. They text one another with abandon and too many emojis. Parting no longer has a pang to it; parting only stokes the warmth of returning.

Ben declines a title for himself. He keeps it for a thin volume of poetry, economically called _Three Trees_. On a best-selling scale "from 1 to Billiam" (Richie), the volume will achieve a bashful 5, which is more than Ben knows or cares to predict. He will request three author’s copies, printed on paper so thick that one copy is easily layered over with freehand watercolor washes. This copy will become an elusive Grail among the 22nd century Marsh collectors.

But this is still 2016, and Beverly is hugging Audra at Gatwick. Both laughing and, if truth be told, both crying a little over a secret that will be secreted for another twelve hours, i. e. Bev’s and Richie’s homecoming. This time, the rugged landscape feels cosy; familiar, with a touch of Indian summer in its fields’ yellows. Bev resists the yoke of jet lag; drives them up; tickles Richie into wakefulness once they touch base and Ben is at the car door, an enraptured Homey at his side.

They eat, drink and make merry while Ben gets the barbecue going. Bev is babbling; still floating with a difference, her love affair with air and speed going strong. Even Richie, their levity expert, is floored. “I love Paris,” Bev says, “I love Omaha, I love bizz school, I love you, and you, and that bad boy snaffling my hot wings, _down_ , Homey. I love crack-of-dawn barbecue. Ben, did I say I love you? I did? Great! Because I really, really, really happen to love you.”

“She only had a soda on board,” Richie reassures Ben. “Loser’s honour. _I_ had the Scotch.”

“And Bill is having a baby!” Bev erupts, grabbing Homey’s forepaws to wave them ecstatically.

“I’ll get some wat - what?!”

“BILL IS HAVING A BABY! Don’t you see? It’s gone! The, the curse, plague, barren whatever, it’s been - lifted! ”

“What she means,” Richie tells Ben wisely, “in my marginally tipsy opinion, is that Big Bill got Little Bill to do the daddy thing. Or something did.”

The words eddy down Ben’s brain, with pictures, thankfully hazy, of another meal. Of cookies hatching - of an atrocity that had puled its way, high-pitched, accusatory, towards Bill. They never spoke of it; but when he was leaving for his flight, Bill had let his head rest the tiniest interval on Ben’s shoulder and said, “That’s twice I’ve let her down. My wife. No third time”. The reverse of a deathbed confession, and Ben had never grassed on it. Had, instead, kept it in his heart’s wallet, along with his memory of Bill crying his guilt over a small yellow raincoat. Somehow the two notions had merged in Ben’s consciousness: grief over a lost child and the ensuing barrenness. But, Bev? Had she... is she... could she possibly...

Richie is a rusher where Hanscoms fear to tread. 

“Embers, you wanna preggo?”

“What? No! Maybe! No idea!” She flumps down next to him, motioning away Ben’s offer of San Pellegrino. “That is so not the point, hon.”

“...”

“The point is, I can do anything from now on. And so can you.”

She lifts her face to them, her eyelashes a little tangled and still vulnerable, while the light under them is stronger than it has ever been.

“Back when we thought I couldn’t have kids, Tom... he blamed it on the smoking, see. Then my blood. My backwoods DNA. My, my weird, my wicked... and I bought it. Had to, with the dreams and all.”

“Not your fault, girl. Never ever your fault.”

“And the dreams are gone, aren’t they?” 

They are half kneeling, half leaning over on each side of her, a human portal. Ben trusts her words - trusts her to know the contour of their wild venture, and show them how to be one another’s safe passage, like in Neibolt. 

“Yes, oh yes. But when Audra told me, it felt... it felt like I was given a life voucher. Like I no longer needed the anger to keep my fear at bay, that Tom was right and I was wrong to think myself clean. But if IT’s gone off Bill’ balls, then IT’s off our backs. For good. And I’m not a red freak.”

“You never were, Beverly.”

She hoists her shoulders off the chair’s wooden frame to kiss the width of Ben’s mouth.

“I don’t know if I want a kid,” she says. “First, I want us. But if I find I do, and you do, dear heart, I’ll want to have your child.” She turns to Richie, kisses his ten-hour stubble. “Or carry yours. Or we can rappel _up_ a house, for a change. Fly the earth. Learn the lindy-hop. Draw, build, tell. Don’t care how old we are, we have decades of summer to decide!”

To Richie - adding “maybe dad” to his repertoire of Loser, clown squisher, homicidal saviour, tragicomic lover, gay stand-up and best friend paramour - her joy carries the day. Everything that comes next is cast in a golden cast: the crisp gold of beer, of which they drink more. And more. He will remember stumbling with them past the bedroom door at break of day, but what comes next, of their own accord, will be reminisced only as flash-stills, pictures resurfacing on that golden background in the way of holy icons. Bev’s arms and chest, still clothed, anchoring him to her lap while Ben straddled his thighs. Ben’s face in low angle view, strained in softness as he took his fingers to himself - unhesitant fingers, digging and preparing a place for Richie - while joking with Bev about Trojan men. Gold on gold on holy.

And you’d think, okay, another lick of profanity, par for the Tozier course. Well, joke’s on you. Only Richie’s bottom perspective, making this tipsy romp the closest he ever came to a sacred encounter. Richie doesn’t believe. Can’t bring himself to anatomize a world where IT got away with snacking on Georgies for two millenia. But Richie isn’t so blind he can’t spot a miracle at close quarters - say, Ben towering over him like another tall, virile, bearded apparition, but only if Paul Bunyan kept his shoulders slouched and dispensed hugs at Pride parade.

“Bendy-Ben,” Bev whispers in his ear, holding him safe as Ben lowers himself on Richie's cock, breaching Richie’s soul with electrifying pleasure. Now he feels what she felt in that airport: that strong sense of self, bruised and chipped and mortal, but human. All human, and all his to share.

(They will only share the bed occasionally. That’s the thing with sacred - you want to keep it rare, for it to surprise you when least expected. Though Bev drives to Omaha for condoms the very next day.

But they wing it, their profane sacred, now and then. And the gold never quite fades out.)

* * *

In the beginning was Master.

Master took in Homey as a pup, and for long, long years there was only Homey and his human. Master was the warm breath above snow, was the voice dragging Homey away from the crisp fun of windfallen leaves, was the sunlit walks and the boon of water at their end. 

And he taught Homey all of his skills: when to fill space with noise and motion, and when to stand still and let Master talk to the mini humans on Master’s wall-not-wall. Or when to lie down in the growly narrow space that smells of citrus and makes Homey’s ears pop (Homey does not approve). Master, however, thinks fit to subject his nose and ears to that stinky penance, and so Homey endures it. All Masters have their blind spots, even if Homey's Master does know the one between Homey's ears that requires scritching.

Brandon was... all right. Not quite up to scratch, or scritch. But Homey is an elite soul who understands that Master’s penitential rites sometimes involve depriving himself of Homey, and he endured this too - even when Brandon refused to let him run on his treadmill. Nobody’s perfect. 

Last summer, when Master drove him over to Brandon’s, Homey was concerned. Master, a sweet-breathed human as a rule, had spent the night before soaking sweet with pungent: by the time they arrived at Brandon’s, even the stand-in could see it. He said "Are you _drunk_?", then shook his head and left them together, so that Master could lower his tall form and push his face into Homey’s fur, which, regular enough, but not when Master’s face leaked salt all over the fur.

But then Master came back. A foregone conclusion: Master always knows where to find Homey. Who braced himself for more salt, only to be engulfed in strength and a _snow-leaves-sunlit-water_ tang that Homey, to his perplexity, parsed as Master's newfound bliss. 

It took another trip to suss out the bliss, which is when Homey found that their twosome had grown and multiplied. Master tried to explain, using words that were not _Homey_ , _walk_ , _kibble_ , or _down_ , i.e. a waste of good breath, until Master said _love_ , rubbing Homey’s flank one-handedly while the other hand cupped Homey's jaw. 

This Homey could and did connect with.

The next day he met Mistress, who he knew at once was strong except when she wasn’t, and could relieve Master of the alpha role when he felt like rolling over and having somebody rub his ears for a change. Mistress smells of high grass (Homey approves) and sometimes she needs to be alone with water she doesn’t drink, and paper she screws into balls that Homey is not to fetch in case she changes her mind and opens them flat again, which, _what_?

Humans. Oh boy. 

Puppy Master is another tale. Or tail, given his continuous performance of chasing his own. He is stubbornly loud, and Homey waited at first for Master to pin him down and nip his neck in firm, if loving, discipline. Instead, up showed Master up with a beatific smile, a bite mark up _his_ neck and a tell-tale coat of scents that left Homey entirely confused as their new pack logic. 

“Just take it in stride, sweetie,” Mistress told him, and took him for a walk. 

Puppy Master tried to explain it the next time Homey trotted into the kitchen and found him attempting to mount Master vertically. “See, we’re not bothering with yin and yang in this throuple,” he said. “Wangs, now -”

“ _Richie_ ,” came Master’s voice, despite the laughter. “Stop right here and pass the cardamone.”

Now the leaves are colouring and they’re still here. It makes Homey glad: the longer love endures, the more it occupies him, like an increase of being. The nights prime the air for the cold that snaps at his nose, and Mistress cuts and sews him a coat in one of the bright fabrics that follow her all around the house. Puppy Master gives up on breeding Master and vanishes, to Homey’s grief, but then he is back and louder than ever. More love! The snow thickens, and Master takes to filling the kitchen with those smells the humans love, milk and cinnamon, wine and sugar and star anise (Homey approves); speaking of another fireplace and a guest house “next year”. But next is Mistress with a suitcase, petting one and the other, saying _I’ll be back_ \- a word Homey recalls from his Brandon days. It is the Masters’ turn to screw up paper, only Puppy has a major breakthrough and throws his merrily across the long passage once he’s done with it. Finally! 

And Mistress is back! With the sun in her hair! And Master is lifting her in his arms and carrying her into the house while Puppy Master claps! But, can you believe this? Two months later it’s Master at the door, petting his two and saying the b-word. And so on, while the snow turns wet again, thawing all the good smells for the greater good of Homey’s nose. It is vastly complicated, that game of fetch humans play using their own selves as the sticks, but his to love and obey, his not to reason why. Not when they’re so happy at each return, and each of them brings stories and gifts that usually include something tasty for Homey. (Case in point: socks, cottage cheese, crayons, Miss Dior hand butter. Lickalicious!)

He enjoys it when all of them fly to Los Angeles in the Spring. Master and Mistress rent a boat, because Mistress always wanted to and she’s the alpha bitch, that much is (thankfully) clear. The boat moves a lot, but it leaves Homey’s ears alone, which is a Good Thing. Mistress has beautiful dreams, also a Good Thing, and she calls Master “Captain my captain”, usually when she wants him inside and on the bed where Master is allowed, though not Homey. Puppy M. joins them after a while, saying he’s found a buyer but housecleaning is a bitch, which doesn’t make sense, but, well. It’s Puppy M. He gets seasick at first, but then he gets used to it.

They sail all the way from Florida to Hawaii, and then it’s time for summer again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One day I'll read King's _11/22/63_ just for that cameo of Bev and Richie dancing the lindy-hop.


	6. Chapter 6

By their third summer, the new guesthouse is full. Bill and Audra hog the ground floor on young Joey’s account, while Kay possesses herself of the eagle’s nest under the roof. Brandon, having up-thumbed the top floor (no polyurethane in view), agrees to share it with Mike. Ben drives to Omaha to fetch Mike; drives back with two passengers, one in a coral pink bodice and skirt.

“Everybody, meet Patty,” Mike says. “Patty Uris. We met in Buenos Aires six months ago, and have hiked together ever since.”

“Is it, like, a program?” Richie later asks, his voice still a little cracked and husky, but in a good way. “Do you, like, get a good-behaviour token when you’ve covered a thousand miles? Explain it like I’m five.”

“ _Like_ being an expletive in his case.”

“I heard that, Karate Kay,” Richie booms above the green tie he's insisted on wearing all day long, though Bev drew the line at the suit. Both his and Ben’s are safely hidden in her couture nook until the later evening. 

Patty (whose lap Joey has commandeered over Ben’s, his usual) explains that she took a full time gig with Lonely Planet after selling the house in Atlanta, no idea why, only an urge in her, that this, then, was what she wanted. Two years later, on the verge of moving back into stability, there'd been that last mission in Argentina... and Stan’s _It’s summer, why not?_ in her mind, its nonchalant ring intact. So she’d gone for the two of them. The mission had been a piece of cake, leaving her time for a final tour of the open-air milongas, where you can dance or watch the dancing, or drink the strong sober red wine, standing on your feet. And there, standing out in the crowd…

“Another Lonely Planeter,” Mike says quietly. 

They leave it at that in Kay and Brandon’s presence, to say nothing of Joey’s. A Sunday child deserving a sunny climate, Joey is one of the two reasons why Audra pushed Bill to relocate his family in Vermont. Close enough to pastoral England that Audra barely felt the change, and close enough - but not too close - to Maine that Bill can visit Loserland once a year, another green space by now.

Ben, circulating wine, pistachios and his unconditional smile, marvels at it all. _So many people_ \- a thought ill-tailored to their grand total of ten, but reflecting Ben like a parabolic mirror. Bev’s hand strokes his cheek, a grace note to his joy, before she sits next to Audra, the breeze matchmaking between their auburn hair.

“So,” Bill says, flipping one lanky leg across his ankle (Joey copies the gesture gravely). “Who gets the credit for joining these men and this woman?”

Ben glances quickly over to Patty, who only raises her glass to him. However far Mike caught her up on the Losers’ alumni records, she looks unfazed. As does Brandon - who, when Ben hawed and hummed his invite, only said “Man, that’s three days out of five you’ve come to the office this week. I’ll petition for Omaha to legalize plural marriage if that’s what it takes. Also, Homey approves.” The jury’s still out on Kay, but she did come, and gave Bev a three-branched candlestick in cut glass worth a queen's ransom.

“Not me,” Kay says, winking over at Mike. “You ask me, celebrate rhymes with celibate.”

“Mikey? You, ah, borrowed another Shokopiwah ritual for the occasion?”

Brandon frowns. Homey woofs. Mike, still a little flushed from Kay’s wink, spreads his hands wide in denial.

“Actually, you’re the guilty party, Bill,” Bev interjects “All that handholding in your books! We took turns reading them aloud, you know, in our long winter wakes.”

“Snowed in and battling cabin fever,” Richie segues dramatically, “except for Ben here, who risked his life daily trudging into the woods so we could roast a bear over our last dying log.”

“Don’t listen to them,” Ben tells Bill. “One, there’s a reason why I have my glass walls facing south, and that's winter heating, and two, we love _The Grin_. Just, we thought we’d have our own handfasting, now that…” His gaze touches lightly on the light, yet palpable bulge in Bev’s stomach. A reverent gaze, as is Richie’s, though in Richie’s case the belief is recent and firmly parochial, with Bev as its High Priestess. 

“Congrats, Bev,” Mike says, the words a Loser’ s secret handshake - hopeful, jubilant - echoed in Bill’s quiet “Yeah”. 

They while the day away on the patio, with food and drink and the sweet oil of laughter to ease them into their best memories. When the afternoon colours into evening, Bev goes back to change into the fountaining red dress, and Ben slips into his new brown suit. The suit fits his body like a glove; like a continuation of Bev’s caress over his shoulders, his back, his thighs, endorsing every inch of the man he’s become. Ben stares at himself in the glass and thinks he approves, too. It took him three decades, but he does.

“Handsome, you’re perfect,” a voice says behind him. “And I need the bathroom.”

Oh god. “You… you’re not feeling queasy, are you?”

“No,” Richie says, kissing him to prop word with evidence. “But I need to pee. And Mike is waiting outside for you with a brown parcel and his Mike-like conspiratorial air. If it’s poppers, I want in.”

“Oh,” says Ben, taken aback. 

Bev got the cut glass, a tribute to her sharp-boned translucent beauty, and Richie got an advance copy of Bill’s new script, _(S)laughter in the Dark,_ along with Bill's blessing to podcast it. Ben thought himself vastly spoiled to have ten people at his house, all of whom love him and his unconventional lifestyle, but apparently Mike disagrees.

He steps out to find Mike staring silently at their handmade coat rack. 

“Here,” Ben says, unhooking the three Hogwarts scarves. “Can you carry these for me? We’ll tie them to a branch. Can’t get handfasted without all of you guys at my side. And I’ll, er…” A pause, because Mike has been unwrapping the parcel while he spoke, and what Mike now hands Ben is a small, ancient-looking book that the Derry librarian mentioned once in young Ben’s hearing, the title sticking to his mind and bending it to poetry, forever, because it was unique.

“Is that…”

“Whitman’s _Leaves of Grass_ , yes. Signed edition. No, wait,” Mike says, raising a finger. “Listen. I told you about leaving all my notes to the Shokopiwahs - not the best of amends, but I thought, if one of us, one day, feels like speaking up and telling the world what IT really was, it should be one of them. And I was content to leave the rest of my garret as it was. But on the last night I spent in the library, there was... I can't really name it, but there was this urge, driving me to the vault, putting the key in my hand. I’m not a poet, Ben. I’m a pragmatist, for better or worse. But that same force led my hand to this book, and told me its absence would go unnoticed in Derry, the way so much worse has flown under the town radar. It’s travelled in my car trunk, the book - don’t look so scandalized, mine is a very clean car - and to say the truth, I’d pretty much forgotten about it until I got your call. Whatever that force was, it must have a cosmic dose of humour.”

Ben wants to protest, but apparently the cosmic funny force has him in its crosshairs, because his hands have already taken hold of the book. The book falls open and its pages flutter, unbidden, like birds taking flight, until they stop abruptly.

_I believe in those wing’d purposes,_

_And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me,_

_And consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional,_

_And do not call the tortoise unworthy..._

Random words, but they blaze a poem’s trail in Ben, hopeful and jubilant. 

“Take it, please,” Mike says softly. “I think it means you to have it, whatever it was, and Derry... Derry never knew how to treat the few treasures it had.”

And Bev is walking up the basement stairs, radiant in red, while Richie steps out of the bathroom - Ben's treasures. Outside, their friends are waiting, bubbling with speech and smiles, and together they walk to where their younger selves would have cycled, Joey riding Bill's and Homey's back in turn. They walk up to a small clearing at the fringe of the woods. It holds chairs in a circle - Brandon is carrying an extra for Patty - and it holds the evening gold, and will later hold red and white lights festooning the branches, that Richie says are embers, Ben says are pretty, and Bev says remind her of the Montmartre bistros, way to make me hungry.

All in all, a luminous clearing.

Bev takes her place at its center, standing between Ben and Richie as she did once before, holding each man’s hand during the Ritual of Chüd. This new rite won’t be much - a remembrance here, a pledge there - but that it involves Ben’s best beloveds and the sum of their friends makes it a bona fide Proustian moment.

Being the tallest, Ben lets his gaze wander to the trees that surround them, and then…

The oak is still young, its boughs spiralling up and around its brown trunk. The tree on its left fountains with copper-red leaves in the best Indian summer style, if this was late October instead of mid-July. And that on its left is a cross between a Christmas tree and a cactus, prickly but funny, and almost defiantly green. Oak, maple and monkey tree. Unbelievable on every empirical level (Stan would say), and yet. And yet.

On his left, Bev has begun to laugh.

“Dear heart, they’re waiting for you to say something.”

“Last chance to drop the mic and run,” Richie adds, squeezing his hand all the same.

Ben moves his gaze back to them, sensing, more than he sees, the steady ring of friends within the ring of trees.

“I believe,” he says. And as he speaks, he does. “I absolutely do believe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Derry Library canonically has a signed copy of Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_. I hadn't read the book when I first began to write this fic, but as I did, and happened upon that little fact, I just couldn't leave it alone.


End file.
